I'm liking it more and more. I love that I can access it from the phone and also from the computer, and besides the ideological reasons I think it works great and it's being developed in the right direction.
They just added bots, which I think its a brilliant idea.
https://telegram.org/blog/bot-revolution
I wish they added voice chat as well, replacing skype would be nice.
I'm using it regularly. The main reason I switched from WhatsApp was indeed the buy from facebook - I looked around and found Telegram to be a viable option. So far I communicate with a lot of people via Telegram - altough they use Whatsapp too. The main issue is "Hey, have you got WhatsApp? - No. - What??" and while explaining Telegram, I find that the very reason I switched is not much of an issue for the others. Other reasons I switched: Desktop client At the time I switched, there was no option to write a WhatsApp Message from my Computer - and since I'm sitting before this machine 80 % of my time, it was inconvenient to scram out my phone, type on the tiny keyboard, put the phone back into my pocket/onto the table and repeat until frustrated ^^ I needed some other means, Telegram delivered. With (now) Native Linux/Win/Mac Application and even a Commandline version - I'm pretty satisfied. Open API As a person who programs a lot, this was very interesting - doesn't matter much to non-programming folks, but to me it is. Why? Someone made an Commandline-Interface for Telegram, someone else made a Chatbot with that Commandline interface, I adapted this project for my personal needs (Calendar management of my band - who is away at which date etc.) - I'm free to do such stuff! And thats amazing. So is the creativity of other people - I don't need to be a programmer to enjoy such stuff. Security Private Chats between peers, which happen to be encrypted - nice to have. Although I read somewhere, that the encryption (MTP Protocol) is weak in a way, it's better than nothing. I'm looking forward to more features and stuff, to make more people switch to Telegram. The ultimate thing would be (for me) a self-hosted Telegram-Server, which I can integrate into my normal App - so I can have e.g. Company-Intern Chats within the same App as my other Chats (think of Slack - but integrated) I'm sorry for the missing sources, I didn't have the time to search everything.
This is exactly the problem I am facing too while explaining to others why I do not use whatsapp much and try to use telegram more and more by the day But the market of whatsapp is so widespread and huge that bringing people to chat on telegram looks like a vain attempt. Anyone who disagrees here? Feel free to share your opinion.
I've been fairly successful getting the people I interact with to install it, it's not like they have to uninstall the other things. The option to use the same chat on the computer and the phone has been my main selling point (though Facebook messenger does that too I guess).
Wasn't there something about Facebook messenger not requiring an account now: http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2015/06/sign-up-for-messenger-without-a-facebook-account/ ? You can just use your phone number, similar to Telegram. I too use Telegram, but nobody else I know does...It's a shame, because the web app and phone app are both really pleasant to use!