Telegram has thrown out a doozy with its latest update because 1000 people can now participate in a group video call. Now this is obviously to outdo perennial competitor WhatsApp, which recently allowed people to join video calls akin to what we can already do on a conferencing software like Zoom. However, WhatsApp only allows you to have eight people on a group call at a time.
As good as this is, there is a caveat. Of the 1000 people that can participate in the group calls, only 30 can broadcast video, meaning the rest are just viewers. This kind of sounds like Twitter Spaces, except on a messaging app. Telegram also said:
“We will keep increasing this limit until all humans on Earth can join one group call and watch us yodel in celebration (coming soon)”
Telegram
I can’t certainly wait for a day when that will be possible. Also, when Zimbabwe’s mobile network operators (MNOs) offer us more bundles for messaging apps, so we have more than WhatsApp to choose from.
Econet holds the key to Zim getting a Telegram bundle
In addition to the video call expansion, Telegram also rolled out play back speeds to video from 0.5x to 2x. Video messages are now in a higher resolution, users can now share screens with sound during 1-on-1 video call and there has been a new option for the message auto-delete feature which now includes a month in addition to messages being deleted automatically after a day or a week.-techzim