Nova: real profiles for group members

In a group of a few thousand people, members are close to faceless. You see a name, an avatar and maybe a message or two a day. Newcomers have nobody to talk to, and admins can't tell who is engaged and who is just lurking.

Nova tries to fix that by adding extended profiles and social features on top of the chat. 🌐

More than a name and an avatar

A regular Telegram profile tells you nothing about a person in the context of a specific group. Nova builds its own profile layer over the chat: members fill in details about themselves, and the community sees them in a clear format.

The developers describe it as infrastructure that manages profile visibility, interaction and activity. The goal is a big community that feels orderly and under control instead of an endless wall of messages.

Three levers for admins

• Visibility. Control over which profiles and which details other members can see.
• Interaction. Features that give people a reason to meet and reply to each other.
• Activity. Tracking who actually takes part in the life of the chat.

Everything is managed from the main panel, which opens with /start and holds the core settings.

Multilingual out of the box

Nova supports several languages, and /language switches the interface. Its core audience is Turkish speaking, which shows in its descriptions and directory tags.

That is no problem for an English or Russian chat, but click through every screen before rolling it out to make sure the translation works for your members. The /about command gives a short summary of the project.

Adding it to your group

1. Meet the bot. Tap Open, send /start and pick your language.
2. Test first. Make an empty test group and add the bot there to explore the features calmly.
3. Permissions. Give the bot only the admin rights its features require.
4. Announce it. Before launching in your main chat, tell members what the profiles are for.
5. Ask for feedback. After a week, check whether people find it easier to connect.

Who it suits, and who can skip it

Profiles make sense where people want to meet each other: hobby clubs, interest communities, city and student chats, gaming clans. 🤝

In a chat of 20 friends everyone already knows everyone, and any extra layer only adds friction. Work groups usually do fine with Telegram's built in tools as well.

Respecting member privacy

An extended profile means more personal data on display. A good rule for admins: don't make filling in a profile a condition of membership, and don't ask for things people wouldn't share with strangers. 🔒

• Keep fields few. City and interests are usually more useful than age or employer.
• Let people opt out. Members should be able to use the chat without a profile.
• Review bot rights. Check the admin list from time to time and remove anything unnecessary.