This Monday, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp fell globally and remained inaccessible for several hours.
” We will not disappoint them when others do, ” said the founder of the Telegram messaging service, Pavel Dúrov, on Tuesday after Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp suffered their biggest interruption of operation the previous day since 2008, remaining inaccessible for several hours.
The Russian businessman revealed that during the global blackout Telegram “welcomed more than 70 million refugees from other platforms in one day”, experiencing a record increase in registration and user activity.
“I am proud of how our team handled the unprecedented growth because Telegram continued to run smoothly for the vast majority of our users,” added Dúrov, noting that some may have experienced slower speed than usual in the Americas as ” Millions of users from these continents rushed to sign up for Telegram at the same time.”
In addition, he referred to Telegram as “the largest independent messaging platform.”
Global blackout
Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp stopped working shortly before 16:00 this Monday (UTC time). About six hours later, around 10:00 p.m., the corporation’s chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, announced that they were gradually getting back up and running again.
In addition to the services controlled by Mark Zuckerberg’s company, problems were reported with the operation of several other platforms, including TikTok – which was also temporarily down -, Twitter, Gmail, YouTube, Tinder, Netflix, Snapchat, Viber and Amazon. The US telecommunications companies AT&T and Verizon, as well as Bank of America and Southwest Airlines, also registered failures.
What is Telegram and why should I use it?
How is Telegram better than Whatsapp?
- Unlimited server storage
Telegram provides unlimited storage. This means all your text messages, images media files & documents will be saved on their cloud. You can log out and log in any number of times from any number of devices simultaneously without losing any data, you don’t need to worry about backup & restore. You can view the active sessions and see on which devices are you logged in now. Thereby you can download any file any time anywhere.
As of today, we can upload a single file of max size up to 2GB. There is no cap on the total number of files that can be uploaded.
2. Media compression
Users can choose whether to compress the image and video or send the uncompressed version.
For example, you can send a raw jpeg image either it as raw or compressed. If you want to preserve the quality as such then choose the option send it without compression.
3. Group member number capacity
As of today, a telegram group can afford a maximum of 200,000 members. For WhatsApp 256 is the maximum member capacity in a group.
4. Username feature
You can communicate with anyone on telegram even if you don’t have the contact number of others. This ensures the privacy of the user’s contact number. You can continue to send messages in a group without revealing your phone number. I read somewhere that WhatsApp is now(2021 Jan) planning to bring that feature soon.
5. Channels
A channel is somewhat similar to groups, which can accommodate an unlimited number of members. The creator of the channel can decide who can post and other members can view the posts.
6 Multi-platform support
Telegram is available for Android, ios, windows phone, windows pc, Mac os, Linux OS, and even through any browser.
7. Secret chat
Secret chat is a kind of end-to-end encrypted chat in which one can set self-destruct timer. The messages will be automatically deleted when the timer hits. It is possibly not able to hack in any way.
8. Bots
It is a piece of program which is based on AI and machine learning at a small level. It can perform various tasks. For example, an image bot can fetch images from the name.
There are multiple types of bots. Popular bots are Image bot, sticker bot, gif bot.
9. Voice calls & Video calls
The latest version of telegram supports both voice & video calls which was missing for a long time compared to WhatsApp. The user experience of this feature in both platforms is almost thesame. There is no significant difference.
10. Sends any kind of file
Users can send any kind of file through Telegram. WhatsApp limits video, images & document type files which is very difficult for a good number of users.
11. Multiple sessions
Users on telegram can log in on multiple devices at the same time and able to receive messages on all devices.
They can remember their sessions on even browsers too. This is a cool feature.
You can keep messages in the draft as well. Suppose you are trying to send a message to another user. You typed a long paragraph and you decided to send it later. The draft message will be synced to all your devices and you can send it from another device.
Pros of Whatsapp
1. End to end encryption everywhere
WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption everywhere. Telegram uses it only for secret chat.
2. More number of users are there in WhatsApp
WhatsApp has more users than telegram.
As per my experience, Telegram is far better than WhatsApp, many features and great updates regularly. so I prefer it more than WhatsApp.
WhatsApp’s new privacy policy has created a lot of uncertainties among the users and a good number of WhatsApp users searched for alternatives. I am happy that telegram has surpassed 500 million active users because of the mess. I am quoting the WhatsApp’s updated privacy policies impact below.
By agreeing with new terms and policy you will be effectively agreeing to Facebook and its subsidiaries having access to at least some of your data. Importantly, however, given WhatsApp’s use of end-to-end encryption, any messages, photos, and other content can still only be viewed by the sender and recipient.
