Saturday, November 26, 2016

Telegram launches its Medium (and a copy of the Instant Articles of Facebook) – Corriere della Sera

Not only text messages. Telegram, founded in 2013 as a rival to WhatsApp, want to get out of his fence and become something more. Now has also launched Instant View, the equivalent of the Instant Articles of Facebook, and Telegraph, a platform for the rapid publication (and, if desired, anonymous) of articles on the web.



Telegram, WhatsApp, and Messenger: three rivals

For the first few years, the Telegram has been able to count on some of the strengths that allow it to rival WhatsApp: the total gratuitousness, great respect for the privacy of the users, some features tasty (like stickers) or useful (such as the bot, the channels, and a convenient desktop version). In February 2016, the app could celebrate an important milestone: 100 million members. Nothing in comparison to WhatsApp and Messenger, that have passed the billion users monthly. Despite this, the Telegram has always been, for the two messaging services is the property of Facebook, an opponent to keep an eye on. In the last few months, many of the features that made it unique Telegram appeared also on the app is the property of Mark Zuckerberg, just think of the encryption end-to-end introduced by WhastApp to April or bots for Messenger, announced for some time, and exploded in the last year.



The new features of Telegram

Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, as well as of the social network, Russian VKontakte, not stayed to watch while WhatsApp and Messenger have grown and experimented with. On 22 November the official blog of the messaging app has announced a long series of innovations. Some are little tricks that make Telegram the most comfortable to use, for example the possibility to perform a search in the history of a group chat by selecting the day that we are interested in from the calendar. But some of the new features show that the app wants to look over the border of the messaging, bringing the challenge to the competitors on another level. With Instant View articles in a handful of magazines – for now, Medium and TechCrunch, but it will reach other – you can instantly view on the Telegram, as already happens on Facebook with the Instant Articles. And Telegraph Durov and his team have launched an open challenge to the Medium, the platform for publishing articles that he is sending retired the blog. Interface more minimalist, great ease-of-use and speed of publication taken to its extreme consequences: in order to publish an article on the Telegraph does not even need an account. Just write and click “publish” to generate a link ready to be shared – with the Instant View, it goes without saying.



Objectives and critical

Combined together, Instant View, and Telegraph make Telegram tempting for those who want to use it not (so much) for texting, but to distribute content. The app already has a tool ad hoc channels, but it now offers a higher gear, or rather two: the ability to create in a few clicks, articles with videos, tweets, pictures and anything else that your followers will be able to view instantly, reducing the waiting time and the consumption of data. Not surprisingly, in the post on the official blog, Telegram invites its users to take advantage of the Telegraph for “publishing stories, just as a mainstream media”. There are, however, critical. VentureBeat points out that the post created with the new platform does not offer guarantees as to the identity of the person who created them, since there is no account, each of you can sign them with the name you want, real or fake. “In an era in which proliferating false news – notes the head of the american – there is no one to prevent you to sign a post with “Barack Obama”, “Donald Trump”, “Mark Zuckerberg”, a colleague or anyone else.”

November 24, 2016 (change on November 25, 2016 | 19:42)

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