This morning I saw a number of tweets mentioning Telegram (a messaging service, like WhatsApp) and their sudden success post Facebook acquiring WhatsApp
Today more than 1,8 million people joined Telegram. We are setting up more servers to be prepared for the high load.
— Telegram Messenger (@telegram) February 22, 2014
They are doing some interesting things here which are different than WhatsApp
- They are building out a protocol for encrypted messaging and are making it open source. They offer self destructing messages and multi device access.
- Clients are available for major platforms and developers are being encouraged to develop alternate clients that can use the protocol
- They are non-commercial
At the same time there are some things that make me concerned
- Right now they are a non-profit and are being financed by a grant. They plan to never charge or have ads and if the need for money arises then they will set up donations or have premium features
- They have no limits ( or near no limit) file transfers, which Im sure costs quite a bit. So unless the grant is huge need for money will approach faster with rising popularity
- There are some concerns around the encryption method chosen by Telegram
- http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-cryptanalysis-contest
- http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/49782/is-telegram-secur
It should be interesting to see how they progress their stated goals and maintain their new found success. At the very least its getting people to start talking and thinking about encryption of their communications.
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