Recent events regarding social media, many users have been switching to Telegram for their instant messaging needs and social media output. Media outlets have been reporting on why to switch for weeks. But why?

I, personally, have been using Telegram since about 2013, and have watched it grow. I’ve had friends join intermittently, and am slowly encouraging more to join, especially those who are using WhatsApp. Why? Security features (though some aren’t enabled by default) are a big component over regular social networks. Additionally, your data isn’t shared amongst multiple platforms, unlke WA, which shares with Facebook, Instagram, and any other Facebook-owned network.

Telegram is nice in that you can create groups that function in similar ways to Facebook groups and/or messenger chats. You have the ability (with a little bit of work) to automate responses using “bots” (more on this in a future article).

Looking at the bottom of my post, you can see that I’m even using Telegram for comments on my articles. Even though you use a phone number for a login, I never see that data. It is encrypted between you and the Telegram server. (I also have my site data encrypted using SSL, so there’s that layer of protection, too).

This is only my simple, cursory overview of Telegram. There’s much more to learn about how it works. I’ll be sure to post more about those in the future, but the articles mentioned above have plenty of good information as well.

As usual, feel free to comment below, or contact me on Telegram or Twitter.