Telegram, one of the fastest growing apps in the world, has recently surpassed the one billion download mark worldwide, posing a great challenge to other Messenger platforms. According to TechCrunch, Telegram is among the 15 apps that have been downloaded by more than a billion users worldwide.
“The number of users who downloaded the app accelerated in 2021, reaching 214.7 million downloads in the first half of 2021, an increase of 61% over 2020 from 133 million that year.”
What makes it special is that Telegram is a non-app that comes pre-installed on most mobile phones, with other apps like Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram having other billion downloads.
So with this report, Telegram celebrated its 8th birthday on the 14th of August. Telegram, which has been capturing users’ attention for 8 years since 2013, has released its August version Version 8.0 on August 31 this year.
The main feature of this update is that in July, Telegram released a new update called Live Stream, enhancing the group video call feature.
Telegram
You may remember that we were introduced to Telegram and informed you about the group video call facility that can be maintained by connecting up to 1000 users. The video call facility, which was limited to 1000 users, has now been upgraded to allow an unlimited number of users.
What is special about this is that this feature has been released for channels in addition to groups. They call it the “Live Stream”. Attractively designed, this live stream feature will keep the audience captivated. It is also certain that this facility will be more useful in the field of education.
Telegram also hopes to upgrade existing group calls to include only voice recording, including video. This feature was released for Telegram Beta, but due to improvements, they have decided not to add it to this update. However, this will undoubtedly be another challenge for other video conference platforms.
Telegram unlimited 2
With this feature, several features including flexible forwarding, jump to the next channel, trending stickers have also been introduced.
Flexible forwarding facility allows you to forward a message with the original username, with or without the original username. You can also forward a media file with or without a caption. This is a feature of Telegram Unofficial Clients and this time they have released it for their users to use as well.
Jump to the next channel
Jump to the next channel lets you switch from one channel to another without having to go back to the chat list. That is, after reading the last message of the channel you are on, you can switch to another channel by swiping up.
In addition, this update also shows how many unread comments are in the comment section of a channel. By linking a group to a channel we can get comment section for the channel’s posts. This has been released as another enhancement.
Trending Stickers
The most interesting feature released with the Group video calls update is the trending stickers and the new animated emoji feature. This allows you to easily find trending stickers above the recent stickers bar on your sticker board.
Choosing a sticker
In addition, when the other person you are conversing with searches for a sticker, the “typing” section shows “ch👀sing a sticker” instead. This is also shown for groups, and when someone in a group selects a sticker, it is shown to other members as well.
Telegram has released several animated emojis with each update.
This update has already been released for all platforms such as Android, iOS, macOS, Desktop and they will be releasing some of these features to web.telegram.org in the future.
