Telegram improves self-destructing chats, expiring invite links
WhatsApp's Facebook-friendly privacy changes have caused many users to flock to other secure messaging services. Those services, in turn, have rapidly pushed out changes to improve their features as well as prepare their servers for the sudden influx of new users. For its latest set of updates, Telegram is adding a touch of transience to some of its features, such as public chats as well as invite links, while also making sure that refugees from other messaging platforms will feel at home as well.
Telegram has had support for chats that delete themselves after a period of time for quite a while now but those were limited to Secret Chats. With the latest version of Telegram, any and all chats can automatically delete themselves for all participants in 24 hours 7 days after sending. Sadly, it doesn't seem that users will have fine-grained control over those.
New users will probably want to invite their friends to their groups or channels and Telegram is making that both easier and safer. You can now use QR Codes instead of obscure links and you can even set those invite links to expire after a certain period of time, number of users, or even both. Together with the ability for Broadcast Groups to have unlimited members, Telegram is making the platform both personal and massively social at the same time.
With a massive influx of new users, there will undoubtedly be some people who might not want to play by the rules, both Telegram's as well as your social circles. Telegram is updating its reporting system to both make complaints and reports clearer, like allowing comments to be added for an explanation, and make it less likely for others to abuse the system.
The latest Telegram update also improves home screen widgets on both iOS and Android, like adding a Chat Widget that shows the most recent messages. Because of the usual platform differences, however, only Android will always show the latest messages with iOS' widget will only be updated at intervals.