The rivalry between WhatsApp and Telegram is well known to all and this confrontation opened a new chapter on the social network Twitter, in which Telegram mocks WhatsApp with an epic troll: “What year is it?
The messaging platform created by the Durov brothers took advantage of a tweet by WhatsApp on their official account announcing the migration of chats from iOS to Android to mock this feature with a meme in which you can read the sentence: “What year is it?”
WhatsApp recently announced the migration of chats between iPhone and Android and posted it a few days ago on its official Twitter account, a moment Telegram took advantage of to poke fun on the social network Telegram also took to reminding users that its platform has implemented an automatic backup of all chats in the cloud and that its users can switch from iOS to Android and vice versa without the need for migration. This innovation has attracted a lot of attention from Telegram users, who have praised Telegram for its advanced features.
Telegram also mocks WhatsApp because this new feature is not yet fully implemented, since it only allows chats to be migrated from iOS to Android, and not the other way around, and moreover it is not available, for the moment, only for devices from the Korean manufacturer Samsung. Telegram is a free and open-source, cross-platform, cloud-based instant messaging software. Its services also provide end-to-end encrypted video calling, VoIP, file sharing, and several other features. It was launched for iOS on 14 August 2013 and Android in October 2013.
Although Telegram is light years ahead of WhatsApp in terms of functionality; the instant messaging app owned by Facebook is still the most used in the world with more than two billion monthly active users, but little too little do we see how the trend is changing; and that more and more users are switching from WhatsApp to Telegram. WhatsApp hopes to announce the expansion of its own feature to include more smartphones as well as adding more manufactures to the compatibility list soon.
Recently, Telegram joined the prestigious club of apps that exceed one billion downloads mark on Google Play. Telegram since its inception in 2013 has become WhatsApp’s biggest rival. However, while it is not a big competitor in terms of user count; the truth is that Telegram far exceeds WhatsApp in terms of functionality, security, and privacy; as well as the frequency of updates.
Of course, India is the biggest market for Telegram as we speak and 22% of its installations came from this country; followed by Russia and Indonesia. Telegram thus becomes the fifteenth application to get more than a billion download times; which is not equal to the number of users. In this way, it joins other services such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Spotify, or Netflix, among others.