12 mo. ago • 91%

Telegram starts to look like a super app, echoing WeChat

techcrunch.com Telegram starts to look like a super app, echoing WeChat | TechCrunch

Telegram, the popular messenger with 800 million monthly active users worldwide, is inching closer to adopting an ecosystem strategy that is reminiscent

Technology @lemmy.world Telegram starts to look like a super app, echoing WeChat

39 comments

The bloat is starting to annoy me. Who asked for stories? How do I get rid of the annoying prompt at the top of the app?

Its basic-ness was one of the original reasons I liked it.

They add loads of bullshit but they still won't add the option to disable read-receipts.

70
- Signal has Stories too, tbh. All apps are beginning to integrate them. Still, they suck.
  The worst thing about Telegram was and still is that End to End encryption is a special add on feature and not the default. Group chats aren't secure either. The only reason why Telegram is used as more secure for illegal activities is that it does not cooperate with law enforcement well and has its HQ in Dubai. That does not prevent any hacks or leaks tho.
  
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  Signal has Stories too
  
  not sure about Telegram but you can very easily disable Stories on Signal
  
  I quite like them though as, to my knowledge, it's the only form of private social media in existence at this point
  
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- 100% agree. Plus the random cryptocurrency thing.
  
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  Plus the bugginess of the new features. Create a group with topics? You'll have a great time...
  
  And a lot of quality of life improvements are still missing. Use more than one client? You don't expect proper sync, do you? True E2EE (secret chats)? Well, no more than one client to begin with. Plus you lose a lot of features. Auto-delte messages? Well, you can, but others can just turn it off. Plus you can't enable or disable it for all chats at once.
  
  What really weirds me out tho is how aggressively they try to make you sync your contacts...
  
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- How do I get rid of the annoying prompt at the top of the app?
  
  Using any unofficial client like Nekogram
  
  7
- Sounds like it’s time for me to start investigating a move to a different cross-platform chat app. The enshitification continues.
  
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  Matrix would be the perfect solution if it was more widely adopted.
  
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These "super-app" fantasies always ignore the fact that WeChat is ubiquitous in China because the Chinese government practically requires everyone to have it. How exactly is that supposed to be replicated in a non-authoritarian society?

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One marketing executive's "super" is another man's "crammed full of crufty garbage that nobody wants."

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- I use and love Telegram. I use almost all of its features. All of its clients are open source. It has an incredible API for writing bots (which I also do). Their desktop Linux app is native! When I'm traveling I use Stories to share the experience with friends and family. I love the new topics to separate group discussions. It's the one app I've been able to onboard absolutely everyone to. I was never able to do the same when I tried to with Matrix and you only get so many chances before people stop moving.
  
  What is crufty garbage to you?
  
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  Heavy user of telegram myself. It is by a country mile the slickest, leanest, most UI guideline-adhering, quickest app to use, on all of its platforms.
  
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  Stories. Why they are in a messenger? Especially in such a pesky way.
  
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  Sounds like a bunch of crap I don't want, and they're adding more crap according to this article. And if they are indeed going the way of WeChat, becoming a "super app" and partnering with Chinese and crypto companies, that makes me very nervous about privacy.
  
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I use Telegram for the random chatter but it's getting bloated ever since they added premium features. I understand they have to make money, but some features like stories can't be disabled at all, and they're selling group names with crypto. Matrix is looking a lot better moving forward.

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- Matrix is looking a lot better moving forward.
  
  Especially that their clients are becoming usable even without limiting yourself in how many rooms have you joined.
  
  but some features like stories can't be disabled at all,
  
  That's worrying. Hopefully the FOSS fork will add a toggle for it, or a new fork will appear
  
  2
Lmao meanwhile X.....

10
- Yeah, Musk bought the wrong company.
  
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I don't trust anything that needs a phone number

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Heeeeere we go, get ready to buy your Verification Label for $2/month or some whit

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As long as I can use Telegram with open source third party apps I give a shit about their bullshit.

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- What 3rd party app would you recommend to use telegram? I'm getting really annoyed by the stories thing at the top.
  
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  I'm a nekogram user but also heard a lot of good things about forkgram
  
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  I'm using TelegramFOSS right off F-droid and until I read this thread I didn't even know there was a stories feature
  
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This is the best summary I could come up with:

Telegram, the popular messenger with 800 million monthly active users worldwide, is inching closer to adopting an ecosystem strategy that is reminiscent of WeChat’s super app approach.

To build out this super app platform, Telegram relies on a network of infrastructure partners both from the established tech world and the crypto space.

WeChat has pioneered the mini app model in China and now powers millions of them serving functions from payments, food delivery, e-commerce, ride-hailing, to driver’s license renewal, just to name a few.

The developers would also need to learn the programming languages of blockchain apps, which might actually be an easier barrier to overcome than the process of understanding the economic incentives that facilitate decentralized applications.

Importantly, payment functionality played a critical role in WeChat’s early rise as it instilled a habit among users to make daily transactions through the chat app.

It will be fascinating to witness what lessons Telegram and TON take from WeChat and how a mini app platform with a decentralized twist unfolds.

The original article contains 678 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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i've never understood why people like telegram, it's not some bastion of virtues, it's just a shit app like any other that realized that there's a market for the appearance of privacy.

-2
- It's a good chat app overall. You just have to treat it like sms and assume there's no real privacy.
  
  Also, they're very generous with file transfer size. It makes shifting things between people so much easier.
  
  In other words, it's the features rather than the supposed privacy. If I want privacy, there's way better options, same for security. But those options suck with some of the more useful things at times.
  
  Mind you, if they keep going with this shit, it'll be so bloated that it'll cease to be a good pick for the stuff I use it for, but there are actually plenty of users that are hyped about the shit whatsapp is doing, and the same goes for telegram.
  
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- It treats desktop clients as first-class citizens. That's a huge, huge advantage over Whatsapp, for me.
  
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- My colleague likes it and use it all the time. He doesn't really care about privacy and he often brings up cool features telegram has, like simple photo/video editor, shrink tool for media, newsfeed, etc. Which all seems quite polished and very usable. If only it wasn't such a mess in its core.
  
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