Telegram To Debut Video Conferencing Feature In May

Remember when every social media and communications platform started introducing video conferencing features in order to compete against Zoom’s ever rising popularity? Good times. While this may seem later than most, private messaging app Telegram has revealed that it’s finally launching their own group-based video call feature starting in May, ten months after the one-to-one version was released.

According to CEO Pavel Durov, the platform’s own take will come with all of the familiar features such as screen sharing, encryption, noise-cancelling, as well as desktop and tablet support. Of course, the video conferencing function will be protected by Telegram’s end-to-end encryption as well – as with most of its existing sub-features.

From the sample video provided by Durov, the platform’s group video call function can be viewed in both portrait and landscape orientations, where the main portion of the call will display and switch between active speakers. Participants are listed just below the video window in the former, while the latter will have them displayed in a column on the right side of the screen. Telegram did not mention how many users are able to participate in a session.

Although it is late to adapt the whole group video conferencing fad, it was revealed in a recent beta that Telegram has already jumped onto Clubhouse clone bandwagon back in February. The private messaging platform has yet to reveal when that feature, introduced as Broadcast Groups, will be available to non-beta users.