Comment by phillc73
11 years ago
> ... persistent group chat, shared chat history with a search function, synchronized unread/read statuses....
Across all my devices - Web, Linux, Android and FirefoxOS. No advertising.
Telegram - http://telegram.org
I've been using it for several months now and am very happy. Would love integrated voice calling, especially to landlines/mobiles, and hope someone develops a plugin for this soon (perhaps the guys at Jaconda[0] will do it).
I have just one regular contact still using Facebook messenger, and our conversations are now very disjointed, as sometimes I don't login to that service for several days at a time. I don't use Skype as a messenger service, but do still have about four or five contacts who are wedded to it for free voice calls. I use WebCallDirect[1] for cheap calls to landlines/mobiles.
Telegram looks really interesting. It has an open protocol and API so it should be easy to integrate with other systems; there is a libpurple port for it[1]. Maybe Telegram could be a replacement for XMPP?
[1] https://github.com/majn/telegram-purple
My biggest concern with things like this is that AFAICT their business model is kind of foggy. Quoting from their FAQ, "Pavel Durov, who shares our vision, supplied Telegram with a generous donation through his Digital Fortress fund, so we have quite enough money for the time being. If Telegram runs out, we'll invite our users to donate and add nonessential paid options to break even. But making profits will never be a goal for Telegram." https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-are-you-going-to-make-money-o...
That's a very nice sentiment, but it's not a sentiment that fills me with confidence that I can rely on the continued existence of the free thing they're giving me.
Wow, Telegram looks great! Now if I only could convince all of my friends to switch...