Why I think Telegram Messenger is Better than Whatsapp for Managing Large Groups apart from one Feature
Telegram has stayed a step ahead of Whatsapp for group management since day one except for one newer feature that Whatsapp recently introduced. For very large groups though Whatsapp's feature is not the big decider…
Telegram does highlight many of their niche advantages at https://telegram.org/faq#q-what-makes-telegram-groups-cool such as:
* Telegram is full cross-platform (even has a Linux desktop client) and does NOT need the phone to be connected to work. Phone can be off, have a flat battery, be lost, etc.
* Telegram groups can have up to 200,000 members each.
* Replies, mentions, hashtags – Easily trace a conversation and keep communication efficient, no matter the group size.
* Smart notifications – Mute the group to get notifications only when people mention you or reply to your messages.
* Pinned messages – You can pin any message to be displayed at the top of the chat screen. All members will get a notification — even if they muted ordinary messages from your group.
* Group permissions – Set default permissions to restrict all members from posting specific kinds of content. Or even restrict members from sending messages altogether – and let the admins chat amongst themselves while everybody else is watching.
* File sharing – Send and receive files of any type, up to 1,5 GB in size each, access them instantly on your other devices.
* Public groups – Get a short link for your group and make it public, like t.me/publictestgroup. This way, anybody can view the group's entire chat history and join to post messages (NO signup or registration).
* Customization via bots – Create custom tools for any specific needs using our Bot API and Inline Bots, for example, to automate status updates or alerts to the group.
* Channels are a tool for broadcasting messages to large audiences. In fact, a channel can have an unlimited number of subscribers. When you post in a channel, the message is signed with the channel's name and photo and not your own. Each message in a channel has a view counter that gets updated when the message is viewed, including its forwarded copies.
In a nutshell Telegram is more open not only for group members but also for developers.
So what does Whatsapp do that Telegram is not doing for groups? It does have a nice feature to select a few group members and quickly initiate a video or audio call between all of them. It's probably not going to call 200,000 members though. One other bonus that Whatsapp seems to have is it does not get banned by governments insisting on a backdoor to break encryption on messaging (I have no idea why but I'm just leaving that here too…)
