Video Calls and Seven Years of Telegram
telegram.org
Today marks seven years of Telegram. In 2013, we began as a small app focused on secure messaging and have since grown into a platform with over 400M users. Now this platform also offers video calls.

Highlights of the blogpost:

  • Telegram 7.0 is not yet available for iOS, as Apple failed to review the update in time for Telegram’s 7th birthday (Telegram could have just waited a bit more tbh)
  • for clients supporting the latest API layer available (layer 118), calls and video calls will use the new WebRTC-based VoIP library instead of libtgvoip (which is still embedded in the apps because of backward compatibility)
  • video calls are e2e encrypted, of course

Small curiosity: the 3rd round of the voip contest ended on April 8th. This day probably marked the beginning of the works on the new VoIP library by whoever they hired - even though some people were already working on it. Regardless, it took ridiculously little time to bring it to production on all the official apps. I guess they skipped QA entirely lol

Small curiosity #2: screen sharing is also planned and will be released within 2020

Bonus: for its 7th birthday, Telegram tweeted this nice video with an overview of all its cool features (relevant though I give them a pass as it’s not trying to be some relatable twitter corp crap)

  • @k_o_t
    0•4 years ago

    yup, telegram is used extensively in western europe, and the problem(?) is that people like it because it’s a quality software and thus don’t want to switch from it…

    • riccardoOPM
      3•4 years ago

      Telegram is arguably the slickest messaging app out there, the UX is way better than any competitors’ and the desktop client is not some slow-ass electron app. Of course Telegram’s architecture is basically flawed because it defaults to its custom TLS-like encryption and is not e2e by default, but sometimes you have no choice when your circles are a bunch of tech-illiterate people who won’t move their ass off WhatsApp. It was a pain trying to move them on a platform with a way better UX (Telegram) - I can’t even start to imagine the massive amount of work I would have to do to try to move them on something not as friendly as WhatsApp. It would cost me hours of discussions and an incredible amount of work and research to find appealing and convincing arguments (plus a lot of effort in improving my oratory lol) to try to move them on something like Signal, Wire (which I do not trust as much as I did anymore, considering who owns it now), or (in my wettest dreams) something that uses Matrix.

      It’s been 7 years and as far as we know, Telegram hasn’t acted maliciously and they seem to be driven by the right principles. We cannot trust them 100% but it’s way better than chatting on a closed-source, obfuscated, vulnerabilities-riddled app that is owned by Facebook and in which they poured 16 billions dollars plus years of investments.

      Plus, I have to say that channels are a great tool in a lot of scenarios and the bot API is super easy and fun to use

      • @k_o_t
        3•4 years ago

        totally agree!

        It’s been 7 years and as far as we know, Telegram hasn’t acted maliciously and they seem to be driven by the right principles. We cannot trust them 100% but it’s way better than chatting on a closed-source, obfuscated, vulnerabilities-riddled app that is owned by Facebook and in which they poured 16 billions dollars plus years of investments.

        I probably shouldn’t say or do this, but i’m actually beginning to trust them, which i shouldn’t do

        let’s hope their intentions are actually honest and in the future they will make efforts to be more transparent and sustainable (rn it basically hinges on durov’s own accumulated wealth afaik)