What you need to know
- Telegram has been seeing many major updates in recent months.
- The next big update will be to introduce video conferencing functionality.
- Video conferencing is said to be arriving on Telegram sometime in May.
Although the number of folks working from home is starting to go down, that hasn't stopped Telegram from finally announcing its video conferencing functionality. Telegram's CEO Pavel Durov posted a short video message on his personal Telegram channel showing off some of the features that will be available. Durov also shared that the feature will be coming in May, although we aren't exactly sure when it pertains to a specific day or time frame.
You could think of this as a competitor to Google Meet or Zoom, but it seems to be like a combination of those two platforms along with something like Clubhouse. Instead of just opening the floodgates as soon as the video conferencing room has been opened, not everyone will be able to speak out and share opinions. Instead, individuals will need to be approved by a host or administrator. We've seen Zoom implement similar features to its video-conferencing application, removing the ability for someone to just jump into a call with a bunch of background noise.
Clubhouse continues to be a rather popular platform for creatives and others to gather a bunch of like-minded folks for a useful discussion without a bunch of outside noise. But we also see responses from other platforms like Twitter with Twitter Spaces. Since Clubhouse still has yet to come to Android, even though that could be coming soon, it only makes sense for a messaging platform like Telegram to jump on board.
We're holding out hope that the implementation of video conferencing has been well thought out, as Telegram has been rapidly growing in popularity. Failure to execute this useful feature could render it useless and could end up being abandoned by the app altogether.
