Taking note of Clubhouse, Telegram has today rolled out Voice Chats 2.0 which allows channels to host voice chats with an unlimited number of participants.
The update also adds the ability to record voice chats; see bios of those participating in a chat, there’s an option to raise your hand to speak; invite links for speakers and listeners can be created; voice chats can have titles; and the option to join voice chats with a channel that you control.
In December, Telegram made it so group admins could start a group chat, and today it has expanded this functionality to channels. To start a voice chat in a channel, the admin should tap the three-dot menu and select Start Voice Chat to begin.
If you’re planning to talk to someone famous or hold a group meeting; you may want to record the call so it can be uploaded for others to listen to later. Admins can now record calls by pressing the menu button in a call and pressing Start recording; when complete, the file will appear in your Saved Messages. Chats that are being recorded have a red light next to the title.
To avoid everyone talking over each other in a meeting, admins can control whether someone is muted or not. Those who are on listen mode have the option to raise their hand which will alert the admin that they want to say something. This will also be useful if a channel host is speaking to someone famous and they decide to go to a Q&A. To help admins choose who to unmute, your bio is visible in the list of participants too so they know more about you.
Another option available to admins in this update is speaker and listener invite links. If you decide to host a celebrity on your channel and want to advertise the fact to your audience, you can publicly share the listener link and then give the speaker link to your guest(s); making management of the call easier. To set the tone of a voice chat, you can also give the chat a title.
Finally, if you’re planning to invite someone with a high profile to your voice chat, they may not want to join with their personal Telegram account. With this update, they can now join in as one of their channels. Joining in this manner means their personal account won’t be flooded with messages from fans.
Other features include redirecting forwarded messages if you sent them to the wrong destination; just press the “X” and cancel the action or select the actual destination.
You can resume playback on long voice messages in addition to videos and audio tracks; and Android users can now assign which function is assigned to swiping left in the chat list; the options available include archiving chats, pinning, muting, deleting. Or marking them as read.
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