I'm trying to get them all on Signal. It's a tough battle, but I've got several over.
If that's still the case, it's understandably a hard sell for users who prefer a laptop/desktop-based interface.
It's also unclear how well something like Signal would replicate the social network aspects of FB/IG. Are group chat facilities good enough?
Is the desktop client a "first class" one? Can I use it exclusively, including for initial signup?
A sibling comment implies the answer is "no", but it's ambiguous, since "linking" could just mean the SMS validation, which, IIUC, need not actually match the phone number on the device [1].
[1] presumably a tablet would work and does not necessarily even have an associated phone number, but that's still not a desktop.
Wire also syncs conversations across devices, unlike Signal that's tied to one device (a phone).
You can have multiple accounts on Wire, just like you would use multiple email addresses, each one for different purposes.
Wire is still way behind Telegram on UX, but is a good option for those who don't want to use a phone number or give their phone number to some centralized service. You set usernames and can @mention them (a recent addition to the client — I'm mentioning this as an example to indicate how far behind it is from Telegram, which had this a long time ago).
Lastly, Wire also allows you to backup your chats and restore them on another device. Signal explicitly blocks this from being done.
Part of the appeal of Signal is that it's supported by a well-endowed non-profit.
Having seen may messaging services come and go, I wouldn't in the least bit be surprised if either of these disappeared in a decade or a decade and a half from now.
> Signal's funding is only a recent event, and one could ask how long that would last too, since Signal doesn't even have a paid service.
Recency doesn't make a difference for users considering joining it now (only for why they may not have joined previously). $50M should be plenty to run a service for, say, 10 years, assuming they don't hire a huge number of employees.
As Wikimedia has demonstrated, a paid service isn't required to survive long-term. Certainly, users (and maybe companies) would be willing to donate to a non-profit foundation, whereas doing so to a for-profit company like Wire seems implausible.
Especially in the context of the OP article, the source of the funding of the app and service is pertty important, as it informs the motives, and for-profit motives generally seem to have been, historically, not in the best interests of the users.