Telegram Messenger has had quite the day today after announcing it wants to monetize and it seems like they are not stopping with the announcements. Well today, they have announced Telegram Voice Chats which is going straight for Clubhouse’s jugular.
Telegram Voice chats are available in any Telegram group and add a live layer of ephemeral talk to the group. They run in parallel to the existing text and media based communication that we are used to but at the same time adding the flexibility of talking live with other people.
If your group has active voice chat enabled, there is a special bar at the top that shows who is talking at the moment. When you join these voice chats, you can still move around the app as normal and microphone controls will still remain on screen so that you can mute and umute yourself at any time.
On Android, the full voice chat experience can be enjoyed with a system wide floating widget that shows your mic controls and who is currently talking. On Windows and MacOS, you can choose a push to talk key for voice chats to control your mic even when Telegram is not focused.
Telegram says that voice chats can accommodate a few thousand participants which is interesting since Telegram groups can be spectacularly huge.
It seems like voice chat rooms are all the rage on the social media landscape right now. There is Clubhouse which has been popular thanks to its invite only system. Twitter is testing Spaces which works just like Clubhouse. Now, Telegram has joined the hype with this feature and Telegram being bigger of the three has the higher chance to work.
