Telegra.ph Publishing Tool

If you’re among Telegram’s 100 million-plus active users then the new Telegraph blogging platform service will be much as you’d expect. That makes Telegraph an interesting option for posting short notes or anonymized content online. It offers fast publishing and anonymous posting - without requiring you to register an account or sign in through social media.

A publishing tool that lets you create rich posts with markdown, photos, and all sorts of embedded stuff. Telegraph posts also get beautiful Instant View pages on Telegram.

It’s minimalist and as I said anonymous - you can add your name if you so wish.

To try it, go to telegra.ph on your browser, publish a story, and share it on Telegram or any other platform using the link it created when opened. With Telegraph, your Telegram channel can run stories just like the mainstream media.

The app’s user interface allows for easy embeds. You can also embed images from your computer by clicking on the camera button. The loading time for embeds is relatively fast and publication is instantaneous upon hitting “publish.” Posts are shareable on social media platforms and actually Telegraph posts can be shared anywhere using the link but are designed to work best on Telegram’s new Instant View layout.

As TechCrunch points out, the lack of user history means that if you accidentally delete the link to your published post, it would be very difficult to track down unless you have cookies enabled on your browser. A solution for this will be to immediately after hitting PUBLISH, drop and drag the link to Telegram and send it to yourself.

The anonymous nature also opens up opportunities for abuse, potentially paving the way for internet trolls and spreaders of fake news — a problem that has put tech giants like Facebook and Google under scrutiny.

The introduction of Telegraph continues Telegram’s expansion beyond just messaging. The company recently added games. Telegram’s in-chat games are text based and powered by its bot platform.

Instant View is essentially rich embeds for media links when they are pasted into a Telegram chat. Like Twitter, Facebook or other platforms, Instant View includes an article preview and a feature image to make clicking that link more tempting that just a bare bones URL. Once opened, they load an in-app version of the story, not unlike Facebook Instant Articles or Google AMP.

These developments are all taking Telegram from what was once a basic chat app to a more sophisticated messaging platform that is inspired by the likes of WeChat and Line from Asia. And, with Telegram founder Pavel Durov - featured in the top image — recently telling us that a payment system is on track to launch before the end of 2016, another critical piece of the puzzle is set to arrive soon. Potentially, support for payments could light up games and even media, too, depending on how Telegram wants to play things.