Telegram Group Video Chat Will Soon Compete With Zoom

Telegram is one of the premiere systems with which people securely and privately initiate group chats. Now they've revealed they're about to expand into secure group video calls. After being inundated with requests for the feature over the last few years and especially the last few weeks, Telegram confirmed that they "will focus on bringing you secure group video calls in 2020."

Over the past year, Telegram added 100 million users for a grand total of 400 million monthly users. That's the amount of people that use Telegram at least once a month – not just the amount of people that've ever downloaded Telegram. They're doing their job of providing secure and private chat to people, and they're doing it well.

Now they're pushing into video calls. Per a release from a Telegram's own Pavel Durov this morning, "Video calls in 2020 are much like messaging in 2013. There are apps that are either secure or usable, but not both. We'd like to fix that." The release continued with a bit of a cheeky reponse to requests for release, saying "when will they be ready? You'll be the first to know when we're done, promise. So stop asking."

Meanwhile, Telegram's initiated an education-focused program through their Telegram Polls "QuizBot." With this new system, they're delivering 400K Euro to creators of educational tests. To take part, creators are asked to use @QuizBot to create and publish "an original educational test on any subject at any difficulty level in any language." Accepted tests will eventually be included in a massive Searchable Directory.

Telegram currently has desktop apps for Mac and Windows as well as mobile apps for Android and iOS. Drop in on the @contest channel in Telegram to see more information on competitions for QuizBot and similar services. Telegram is a free chat app – learn about the brand, the app, the system in our article Reintroducing Telegram: privately funded private chat with open source apps.