XMPP vs. Telegram: My thoughts.

I am a rather strong fan of XMPP, the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, and use it as my instant messaging system of choice. I have an account with Jappix.com, and a backup account with XMPP.jp. I use Gajim> for my client of choice on the desktop and laptop, Monal for iOS (and there is an OS X client that seems to be in beta), and recommend IM+ for Windows Phone, Xabber for Android, and Loqui for FirefoxOS. I also enjoy the Jingle extension for voice and video chat, and with WebRTC, that is even possible for web applications such as Jappix.

It is a solid standard for IM and presence, and is heavily extensible, to the point that very powerful platforms can be built on top of it. It can also be secured, with TLS-based encryption for exchanges, and client-side encryption support through PGP/GPG keys or the Off-The-Record encryption platform.

However, due to a few people I know, I have also been using Telegram, Telegram is a pseudo-"open source" IM platform, with open client applications and a proprietary server back-end, somewhat similar to what AOL Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, and MSN/Windows Live Messenger offered. However, Telegram's draw is its encrypted chat, which is only supported in certain desktop clients, and the official clients on iOS and Android. (I did not see the option on any Windows Phone 8.1 client, and the Firefox OS client is based on the web client, which has no encrypted chat support).

 

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