Welcome back to Gizmodo’s March Madness Challenge to pick the best app of all time! Yesterday’s line-up was very close, with Read It Later fans putting up an admirable battle, but Twitter advanced to the next round with 52% of the vote. Today we’re hosting an app contest for people who like to do things differently.
If you’re just tuning in, you can read all of our selection criteria for this historic match Right here. See the full list of contestants embedded below. As always, if you think we’ve missed your personal favorite app, give us a shout in the comments. Now, let’s get into today’s contestants.
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When Apple first launched the iPhone, its move to an on-screen keyboard marked the beginning of the end for the clicky feel of BlackBerry’s physical keys. But for some users, just clicking virtual keys isn’t enough; they want to truly integrate with the machine. SwiftKey uses predictive text and machine learning to guess what you want to say as you drag your finger across the keyboard. For those who can get on the app’s zen wavelength, it’s rocket fuel for mobile typing. Android users have also liked to see this as an advantage over the iPhone for a few years now.
But that didn’t last long. In 2014, Apple opened up iPhones to allow third-party keyboard integration, and eventually the Cupertino giant added SwiftKey-like functionality to its own keyboards. But die-hard fans still love the OG.
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Compared to SwiftKey, we have Telegram, the goth kid of encrypted messaging. Telegram has fans in the United States, but like WhatsApp, its largest audience is abroad. By promoting itself as the most private platform, it has attracted some 800 million monthly active users. While that’s not the case today, its co-founder Pavel Durov, an Elon Musk-style crypto-messaging hypeman of the 2010s, remains a staunch defender of free speech.
Today, if your biggest concern is messaging someone and feeling safe because it won’t be monitored, most experts recommend Signal or WhatsApp. But as Telegram added features like groups and stories, the app has become a hybrid messaging and social network. People use groups to fulfill niche interests, share news about the war in Ukraine, coordinate protests, and more. This has also brought some controversy, as hate groups and extremists have come to favor the app for its almost complete lack of content moderation.
So, reader, what will it be? Are you the kind of person who would have a stroke if you had to use a mobile keyboard in a standard way? Or would you die without encrypted Telegram groups?
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