Telegram challenges Discord and Notion: communities and an advanced editor have appeared in the messenger

The Telegram team presented one of the most functional updates in recent times. The developers have significantly expanded the capabilities of the messenger, adding a full-fledged document editor with support for complex formatting, a new format for combining chats, reminiscent of Discord servers, as well as several functions focused on bots and work with content.

Innovations affect both ordinary users and owners of large communities, making Telegram an increasingly versatile platform for communication, collaboration and project management.

Full-fledged document editor

The main innovation is the built-in text editor, which is far superior to the previous message design tools. Users can now create structured documents right inside Telegram using multi-level headings, tables, bulleted and numbered lists, quotes, code blocks, and multimedia inserts.

Images and videos can be placed in almost any part of the document, and the interface works equally well on mobile devices and computers.

The developers paid special attention to artificial intelligence. The editor has built-in tools based on the Cocoon model that allow you to automatically generate text, create tables, and even work with formulas. Telegram claims that data processing is structured in such a way as to preserve the privacy of users as much as possible.

Another benefit was the increase in the maximum length of a single document to 32,768 characters, which is about four times the previous limit for messages with complex formatting. However, only Telegram Premium subscribers will be able to use the new editor.

Almost like Discord

Another big change concerns the organization of communication. A new type of spaces has appeared in the messenger – communities that allow you to unite several groups, channels and bots around one common topic.

This system is similar in concept to Discord servers. Instead of a large number of separate chats, users get a single space in which they can quickly switch between thematic sections.

At the same time, administrators can independently determine the level of access to each chat. Some sections can be open to all members of the community, others are available only to certain groups of users or administration.

For convenience, several combined chats can be displayed as a single item in the general dialog list. If necessary, it expands, showing all the sections included in it.

By default, community members have the ability to add new chats themselves, but administrators can disable this feature. Then all new sections will first be sent for moderation.

Bots received disappearing private messages

Telegram has also expanded the capabilities of bots. They are now able to send temporary messages that will only be seen by the user who initiated the action.

These responses can be used to welcome new members, report errors, confirm operations, or perform various service scenarios without cluttering the general chat.

Disappeared messages are available both during automatic operation of the bot and after executing special commands. At the same time, the rest of the group members will not see such answers at all.

GIF search has become much faster

Changes also affected the built-in animation library. Telegram has completely redesigned the search system for GIF files.

Search now covers over 350 million animations and supports 36 languages. Content indexing is performed locally using open models of artificial intelligence, thanks to which the search works faster and does not require the transfer of user requests to third-party services.

The developers separately emphasize that the new system fully complies with Telegram’s privacy policy and does not use external platforms to process requests.

Telegram is gradually turning into a universal platform

The latest update shows that Telegram continues to go far beyond the usual messenger. If earlier the service developed mainly as a means of communication, now the company is actively adding tools for joint work, managing large communities and creating full-fledged content.

A document editor with elements of artificial intelligence makes Telegram closer to specialized services like Notion, new communities are clearly aimed at the Discord audience, and the expanded capabilities of robots open up additional automation scenarios. All this suggests that the messenger is gradually turning into a comprehensive digital platform that combines communications, work processes and management of online communities.