[zaidf]

For me, Telegram's small user base is actually what got me on it. My whatsapp is full of way too many groups that I can't leave without negative social consequences. So the one group that I cared about the most (a group with my siblings), we all decided to move to Telegram and haven't looked back since! It's awesome to just have the few closest people on an app and not having to fear that you'll accidentally send a message to the wrong person or group.

[iklos89]

Regarding negative social consequences ... Today I switched phones and wanted to transfer my Whatsapp contacts to the new phone. What Whatsapp did: Somehow they managed to delete me from each and every group I had been in, deleted every chat and I cannot access this anymore. I already had to explain to three friends why I left our group as they were furious because we had talked about important things in those groups.

Just to say this didn't happen with Telegram. Recovered everything smoothly with no errors.

[thewhitetulip]

This happens because whatsapp stores all the information in your phone itself. On the server side, at least before FB bought it, they didn't store your info. this is the reason their team was so small despite the billion users, because they just need to store data on a need basis, since they were a paid messenger.

The moment you switch phones, all the data is lost, because they do not have it in the cloud! This is the reason your phone needs to be connected to Internet when using whatsapp web or whatsapp desktop, because they literally stream your data i.e. chats from phone to desktop!

Telegram is a cloud messenger, data is stored in the cloud and loaded everytime in your devices, ironically this makes whatsapp better than telegram :D at least before facebook bought it.

[denzil_correa]

That's strange. You can backup WhatsApp data at least on iOS.

[iklos89]

Well... I did, at least I thought so. I had it on "weekly" but am not able to recover it. Doesn't matter, just wanted to make the point that I'm in favor of adapting a new messaging up not as widely used as WhatsApp.

[saint_fiasco]

> deleted every chat

Whatsapp never stores the chat history anywhere. All conversations are encrypted end to end.

[herbst]

many, but afaik still not all. when they released encryption it only worked when all involved clients were android (or ios i dont remember)

[saint_fiasco]

My grandmother uses a Nokia C3. Until she switches, every group in which she participates will not be encrypted.

It says on the Nokia C3 version of the app that Whatsapp won't support that device next year, possibly because of that.

[denzil_correa]

You can backup WhatsApp chat history on iCloud.

[iklos89]

False, you can store it locally and/or in the cloud. End-to-end my ass.

[saint_fiasco]

>You can store it

I didn't say you can't, I said Whatsapp doesn't store it. I meant to say that it won't automatically backup and restore your stuff when you change phones.

You have to backup the data yourself in an sd card or a cloud service that you choose. It isn't stored in Facebook's servers.

[skrowl]

They hit 100 million monthly active users back in Feb. I'm not sure that's a small user base by most of our terms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)#Usage_numb...

[thewhitetulip]

I think they meant by the small user base in your friends. :)