Telegram is taking on Zoom with its video conferencing feature

Telegram has gone from being a simple, security-focused messaging app to a jack-of-all-trades social media app through the last few years, with the introduction of features such as supergroups, channels, and, more recently, they have started to introduce features such as voice chatting a la Clubhouse. The developers of Telegram love adding new features to the app, whether it’s useful things that users have clamored for or unnecessary things nobody asked for. Now, they’re adding a video element to the voice chat feature—which, essentially, turns it from a Clubhouse clone to a Zoom clone. At least in theory.

This was announced by Telegram CEO Pavel Durov on his personal Telegram channel, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s essentially the same thing as what was already introduced with voice chats, except with a video feed. Which, turns out, while clearly meant to take on Zoom, Google Meet, and other video conferencing apps, it actually makes it slightly different from those options.

The Clubhouse-like approach means that most attendants can’t speak by default, and a few people are set as speakers while the rest just listens. This gives hosts way more control over the chat and the way it unfolds. On most other video conferencing apps, everyone can speak at any time, and although the host can often intervene if someone’s just misbehaving, Internet trolls can still make their way into sessions and wreak havoc because of these loose restrictions. There’s even a term for this—Zoombombing. On Telegram, something like this shouldn’t happen since users aren’t allowed to speak unless they’re given permission to do so.

Did we really need another video conferencing app? Probably not. But since this is essentially Clubhouse with video capabilities, users might find a lot of value in it for the tighter restrictions and increased control. Of course, though, it’ll all depend on your specific use-case.

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