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Thoughts from the Product Manager / CEO / Founder of Telegram.
💔 My phone got “unlocked” by the Dubai heat 🫠
👴 I’ve been using this $180 Samsung as my primary device for the last two years. I chose it because it’s one of the most widely used phones among Telegram users. I wanted to understand their experience to serve them better 🫡
But it seems I’ll have to change my phone soon 😂
Big day today, we’re launching Telegram Stars ⭐️ – a way to pay for digital services in mini-apps.
Unlike old-school apps, Telegram mini apps like Notcoin don’t need to be installed for use. That’s why they grow so quickly. In addition, Telegram’s social nature allows mini apps to spread virally, so they reach tens of millions of users within weeks ⚡️
⭐️ With Telegram Stars, mini apps can now accept payments for digital services using the simplest payment method possible – in-app purchases on Android and iOS 💳
Mini app developers can withdraw their Stars via Fragment using TON. They can also use Stars to further promote their apps on Telegram — on preferential terms! 👛
Apple and Google take a 30% commission when users buy Stars from them, but Telegram will subsidize ads purchased with Telegram Stars. So if developers reinvest Stars in promoting their app, the overall commission will be nearly 0%! As a result, launching apps on Telegram makes more economic sense than launching traditional mobile apps 📈
The recent mini app boom has already made Telegram the main destination to launch new apps. Stars and ad subsidies bring this to a new level – unprecedented in the history of social media 😏
🆕 Last week brought us another big Telegram update that includes message effects, captions above photos, hashtag search, collapsible quotes, actions for phone numbers in messages and more.
💖 My favorite new addition is Message Effects — a feature you voted for in this channel. Press and hold on the “Send” button after typing a message to choose a colorful message effect. We added over 500 ❗️ message effects that you can attach to any message you send in 1-on-1 chats.
👉 Something even bigger is set to launch this week, so stay tuned!
💎 Notcoin, a miniapp on Telegram, reached 35M active users in just a few months.
🐸 In this app, users could earn a game currency “notcoins” by clicking on the screen. Yesterday, the cryptocurrency Notcoin was minted on the TON blockchain and listed on all major cryptoexchanges. All of a sudden, Notcoin users who just played this game for fun could convert their in-game currency into real money 🤑
🚀 Notcoin instantly became a top-10 cryptocurrency in the world by trading volume, and reached almost $700 million in market capitalization. Imagine — hundreds of millions of dollars in value were created for Telegram users in this miniapp out of nowhere in a matter of months 😲
💪 This amazing success story shows how powerful the Telegram / TON ecosystems are for app developers. Telegram offers app developers more freedom than any other platform, providing unmatched opportunities to leverage social interactions for viral distribution. TON, in turn, provides scale and flexibility for any blockchain project on top of it 💎
We are now seeing a large wave of new miniapps being built on Telegram and TON. Notcoin, the leader of the pack, used its mighty paws to pave the way for many apps to come 🐺
✨✨ Being mindful about what kind of information we consume is just as important for our wellbeing as what food we eat. Words may shape our reality in more ways than we think.
That’s why I never watch horror movies and instead prefer films showing uplifting success stories (“Wonka” was my favorite last year). Popular songs, replayed many times, can work like magical spells that plant suggestions in our brains, so I carefully select my playlist to make sure their lyrics don’t include undesirable scenarios. I like to start my day with mid-20th century songs that express joy, such as “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” or “What a Wonderful World” 💫🦄
Telegram, unlike other apps, doesn’t throw random content at its users — people receive only the news from channels they have joined, and they can unsubscribe any time. This architecture helps us remain an independent platform that doesn’t promote any narrative and instead gives people the full power to choose what they like to see in their feed ✊💪
While reviewing our design contest submissions, I was inspired by a message effects project. So we reused our reactions UI and animated emoji effects to put together this video demo.
Set 🫡 if you want this implemented.
💡 In February 2022, I suggested to restrict Telegram channels in Russia and Ukraine, because they were being used for military propaganda. However, both our Ukrainian and Russian users vehemently opposed restrictions, prioritizing the freedom to access information, even when it’s biased. I supported our users’ choice 🫡
🚫 We still ban accounts and bots that collect coordinates to target strikes or post direct personal information with calls to violence. We don’t want Telegram to be a tool for violence — so please report such channels/bots to us if you see them ⛔️
✉️ As for general news/propaganda channels, we receive official letters from Apple that indicate that certain changes here may be unavoidable, at least for users accessing Telegram on iPhones from Ukrainian SIM cards. As I explained in my interview, to stay accessible to its users, Telegram must consider requests coming from App Stores 🍎
🗽Were it entirely up to us, we would always give our users what they ask for: access to uncensored information and opinions so that they can make their own decisions. However, it's not always up to us 🥲
🏅Telegram is the #1 most downloaded mobile app in China on Android, according to Google Play. Access to Telegram requires a VPN in China, but Chinese people are smart — they like Telegram and find a way to use it.
🇨🇳 Last week, China forced Apple to remove apps such as Telegram from its Chinese App Store. We haven’t seen any decrease in downloads coming from China — and I don’t think Telegram was the main target of this change.
🍎 It was a move against Apple itself: the Chinese authorities are forcing more of their citizens to switch from iPhones to Android smartphones produced by Chinese companies such as Xiaomi. Unlike iPhones, most Android phones allow sideloading apps outside app stores — such as the direct version of Telegram — so more users from China will migrate to Android.
Once again, Apple shot itself in the foot with its centralized “walled garden” app policies. As a result of this change, the iPhone market share in China will keep shrinking. Prioritizing profits over freedom for users is not a good long-term strategy👆
📺 As a leader of a politically neutral platform, it is my responsibility to speak to journalists representing different political views. In February, I did a 3-hour interview with a journalist of liberal views. On the same day, I spoke to Tucker Carlson, who is famously conservative. This way I can remain fair to all audiences and tell the story of Telegram to everyone.
The interview with Tucker is coming out very soon. It will be in video format, which is quite rare for me — so be sure to check it out. I heard that Tucker is also launching an official Telegram channel, so let’s stay tuned for an announcement there 📣
9️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ Telegram reached 900 million monthly users.
Half of these 900 millions users open Telegram daily. According to DataAI, Telegram is the 🚩th most used and 🚩th most downloaded app in the world.
What’s more — Telegram was cash flow positive in the 1st quarter of 2024 and is on track to become profitable this year. This solidifies our position as an independent company that puts its users first.
When we started developing Telegram 12 years ago, we believed that people are inherently smart. And smart people will always choose the freedom and quality of Telegram over the restrictions and mediocrity of legacy apps. It seems we were right.
We’ve always believed in you. Thank you for believing in us too🙏
💰 Last week, we issued $330M worth of bonds to ensure Telegram can keep expanding at an accelerated speed.
This bond offering was oversubscribed, and we were delighted to have global funds of the highest caliber with impeccable reputations as participants. The terms of the bonds (when adjusted for the Federal Reserve rate) were the most favorable for Telegram in the history of our company.
I am proud that every time we issue bonds we get better at this process. The increased demand for our bonds shows that global financial institutions value Telegram’s growth in audience and monetization. This will further solidify our position as an independent platform that is able to challenge the “Goliaths” of our industry.
👨💻 This week we launched the first batch of Telegram Business features. Users can now convert their personal Telegram accounts into business accounts. As a result, they will be able to add their location and opening hours, organize chats with color labels, use automatic greeting/away messages and shortcuts for quick replies.
That’s just the start — we are shipping more Telegram Business features this month. One of these features will revolutionize how people interact with chatbots. Telegram Business accounts will be able to seamlessly add chatbots as their invisible secretaries to respond to all or certain chats. With AI, these chatbots can bring customer service automation to an entirely new level.
The new Bot APIs for developers will become available later this month, all for free. Stay tuned — more exciting stuff is coming for businesses and developers on Telegram this season.
This February, we redefined many-to-many communication by adding 9 new features for group chats.
Now, groups can publish stories and save them as posts on their profile pages for all their members to enjoy. Group chats can also set their unique wallpapers and statuses, both visible to all their members. Group appearance can now be customized in detail: for example, group admins can choose a color and a logo for the group profile cover, or the style of links.
All these features are already available and are unlocked by group members who 'boost' their favorite chats (boosters can get special perks in the groups). Groups that prefer not to ask their members for boosts can instead conduct giveaways, similar to what I did in this channel today.
We wanted to include 5 more features in this update, but the App Store Gods were not in our favor. You will see these features very soon in our March update! 🍀
After my last post, some people expressed concern that, as a result of ad sales exclusively for TON, Telegram may end up holding an unhealthy share of Toncoin, which will be too concentrated for a decentralized ecosystem. We acknowledge these concerns and have come up with a solution.
To limit Telegram’s share of TON at ≈10% of the supply, we’ll be selling the upcoming surplus of our TON holdings to long-term investors — under 1-4 years lockup and vesting plan, but at a discount to the market price. This way free-floating TON will get locked up, stabilizing the ecosystem and reducing volatility.
Potential investors in TON have been actively trying to reach out to us through various means. To make the process of any TON sales from Telegram fair and streamlined, we set up a new email address investors@telegram.org, where large investors ($1M+) can express their interest. Thanks to the participation of more long-term holders, TON will remain stable and decentralized.
The Saved Messages feature launched by Telegram 7 years ago has since become an industry standard.
But now it’s time for the industry to move beyond the simple “sending a message to myself” concept we introduced years ago. This past week, we evolved Saved Messages into an advanced yet easy-to-use Bookmarks/Favorites/Notes service, with new options to organize and view saved content.
This comes on top of many other features we launched this past month. Speaking of which, I personally love the animation of the new one-time voice and video messages — it is pure art. Enjoy!
https://telegram.org/blog/new-saved-messages-and-9-more
🧠 Last week, Microsoft introduced its Copilot AI bot on Telegram.
😌 I am not surprised to see big tech launching their apps on Telegram. Telegram is the only platform that is friendly to all AI developers and doesn’t impose its own competing chatbots on users.
⭐️ The new Stars payments, where Telegram takes almost no commission (less than 5%) and subsidizes ads, are not only lucrative for developers but also compliant with Apple’s and Google’s rules. That’s why we will recommend bots and mini apps that accept Stars in relevant parts of the Telegram apps.
📬 For example, we will start showing an AI section of our upcoming “Mini App Store” to businesses that are adding bots to process customer feedback. Or suggest bots that help create stickers to the users who try our Sticker Maker ⭐️
And so on. The possibilities are endless ⭐️
💎 The $6 million worth of Notcoin donated to me 2 weeks ago has increased in price 4 times and is now valued at $24 million 📈
🚀 The daily trading volume of Notcoin reached $4 billion yesterday, making it one of the top 5 most-traded cryptocurrencies in the world 🏅
🪙 Millions of people earned money on Notcoin just by using a mini app in Telegram — and now they keep earning more. While the Notcoin mini app is accessed via Telegram, the Notcoin cryptocurrency is minted on TON 💎 — the only blockchain technology that is truly scalable and can support a new wave of super popular projects 🔋
💪 A month ago, Notcoin was the largest cryptocurrency community in the history of social media. Today, the Notcoin community is rivaled only by projects it inspired — similar mini apps on Telegram that are allowing tens of millions of users to benefit 🫰
🫡 We are proud to be the platform that serves the people.
🪙 Half a million Notcoin users gifted me $6.8 million worth of Notcoin!
Thank you ☺️
📈 I will hold these coins until they turn to $680M, at which point I will use them to buy more servers for Telegram 🏭
😆 #WealthGapWidens #RichGetRicher #DisparityGrows #SubsidizeTheRich #TaxThePoor (later this month, tapping on such hashtags will show all public channel posts containing them).
🤫 A story shared by Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, uncovered that the current leaders of Signal, an allegedly “secure” messaging app, are activists used by the US state department for regime change abroad 🥷
🥸 The US government spent $3M to build Signal’s encryption, and today the exact same encryption is implemented in WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Google Messages and even Skype. It looks almost as if big tech in the US is not allowed to build its own encryption protocols that would be independent of government interference 🐕🦺
🕵️♂️ An alarming number of important people I’ve spoken to remarked that their “private” Signal messages had been exploited against them in US courts or media. But whenever somebody raises doubt about their encryption, Signal’s typical response is “we are open source so anyone can verify that everything is all right”. That, however, is a trick 🤡
🕵️♂️ Unlike Telegram, Signal doesn’t allow researchers to make sure that their GitHub code is the same code that is used in the Signal app run on users’ iPhones. Signal refused to add reproducible builds for iOS, closing a GitHub request from the community. And WhatsApp doesn’t even publish the code of its apps, so all their talk about “privacy” is an even more obvious circus trick 💤
🛡 Telegram is the only massively popular messaging service that allows everyone to make sure that all of its apps indeed use the same open source code that is published on Github. For the past ten years, Telegram Secret Chats have remained the only popular method of communication that is verifiably private 💪
🇺🇦Interestingly, most people voted for Ukrainian to be the subject of my new post. So here you go — below is everything you wanted to know about the relationship of the Telegram CEO with the Ukrainian language (but were afraid to ask 🤫).
As my mom’s family comes from Ukraine, I was curious about this language since my teenage years. As a linguist by education, I was also fascinated by the differences and similarities between Ukrainian and Russian.
That’s why in 2008, Ukrainian was the first language we translated the interface of VK (my previous large project) into. Back then, most of the websites popular in Ukraine were still in Russian, but I wanted to give our millions of users from Ukraine the freedom to customize their experience. To do this, I had to rewrite most of VK’s code, replacing hardcoded Russian phrases with variables that we then translated into Ukrainian with the help of volunteers.
We were happy with the result: this launch announcement, which is recorded in the Web Archive, will make many people feel nostalgic — https://web.archive.org/web/20120104053631/http://vkontakte.ru/blog?id=70 🥲
For the next few months, I was exclusively using the Ukrainian version of VK to make sure I hadn’t missed any Russian words still hardcoded in VK’s code. I inevitably learnt some Ukrainian as a result. I also wanted VK to be the first popular website in Ukraine to introduce correct case endings for names in Ukrainian (in English, “Paul” in “Photos with Paul” and “About Paul” doesn’t change, but in Slavic languages like Ukrainian “Paul” in these phrases should have different endings depending on the case). As the one who was implementing the support for this part of Ukrainian grammar in VK’s code, I was able to learn its rules in the process.
Soon after we launched the Ukrainian version of VK in 2008, I went to Kyiv to celebrate. I was fascinated by how some words sounded in Ukrainian and would take photos with random notices in the background. People in Kyiv were very welcoming, so over the years I would come back to make new friends who would then teach me new words and fun expressions.
To keep practicing after 2022, I started completing Ukrainian lessons in the DuoLingo app. Using my DurovLingo account there, I scored 5403 experience points in Ukrainian. Currently, when browsing Telegram channels, I understand about 95% of written and 85% of spoken Ukrainian. Sometimes I have to ask one of the Telegram engineers from Ukraine to educate me on the nuances of meaning.
Overall, learning Ukrainian helped me better understand other Slavic languages: for example, my comprehension of Polish and Czech increased noticeably as a side effect. Most importantly, being able to read Ukrainian without translation allows me to make sure Telegram’s moderation processes are fair to all sides and inaccurate translation doesn’t influence any decisions in difficult cases that get escalated to the CEO level.
While Ukraine accounts for less than 3% of Telegram’s global audience, more than 70% of Ukrainians use Telegram for messaging and news, and we’re seeing more and more content in Ukrainian being published.
I hope that knowing Ukrainian — and foreign languages in general — makes me more competent as a leader of a neutral platform where rules are applied equally to all sides. We strive to be a place where everyone is treated fairly regardless of their origin and where ideas can compete freely regardless of their language 🕊
🚀 This month we added 17 new features. These are not just minor improvements or bug fixes. Most of these new additions significantly expand how people use Telegram.
💡 For example, users can explore recommended channels (Search -> Channels) similar to ones they have already joined, while infinite live locations can turn groups into small location-based networks for families and close friends. Custom emoji transform good old polls into infinitely adjustable surveys, while the newly added My Profile section (with birthdays, personal channels, username collectibles, and pinned stories) makes Telegram a much more social space. Notifications for story reactions make posting stories more fun, while new admin tools in groups simplify moderating large communities. And don’t get me started on the epic Sticker Maker we introduced 10 days ago… 🤩
17 new features in one month! Other apps consider themselves fast if they manage to add this many features in a year 😆
🤑 A tech blogger, Pavel Fedorov, just earned $80,000+ in TON 🤑 from selling his username @pavel on the Fragment auction platform.
📈 As an early adopter of Telegram, Mr. Fedorov claimed the @pavel username 9 years ago for free. He put it up for auction a week ago. After a fierce bidding war, the crypto entrepreneur @founder, who owns @crypto and many other Telegram handles, won the auction. In a surprising twist, @founder gifted me the @pavel name earlier today.
🤝 Congratulations to Pavel Fedorov, and many thanks to @founder for the generous gift. This shows how Telegram users benefit from direct ownership over their names. $350M worth of Telegram usernames and anonymous numbers have been sold in the last 18 months.
🆕 The newest versions of Telegram allow you to see when and for how much a username was sold. To check it out, you can go to my channel’s profile and tap on @pavel or @snow. A few minutes ago, I bought @paul on Fragment for 🤑 10,000 TON — to prevent more people from giving me generous gifts 😆
🐥🐥 The full version of my interview with Tucker is out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ut6RouSs0w 🎙
Читать полностью…
🎨 Our newest update lets you make your own stickers right here on Telegram — no additional image-editing software needed. Just go to the recent stickers panel and select “+”.
Creating sticker packs has never been so easy. The sticker platform has existed on Telegram since 2015, but it has now been truly democratized.
There are 16 other new features we are shipping this month, and most of them are already included in the latest version of Telegram. But I’ll tell about them later — for now, I’ll let you focus on sticker creation 🎨
🍿 Big Telegram update with 8+ new features is out.
The bot platform is entering a new era with the ability to add bots that can seamlessly manage personal and business accounts. All bot developers are welcome to check out the APIs and start building.
The rest of the new Business features are just as juicy. My personal favorite is the ability to customize the empty chat with you (I’ve always wanted to replace the “No messages here yet…” text with something more fun and add a sticker I like).
There are several features in today’s update that we haven’t described in the official blog, so soon we’ll publish another post to cover all that is new. It seems we are adding features faster than we can describe them 🚘 😂
All large social media apps are easy targets for criticism due to the content they host. I can’t recall any major social platform whose moderation has been consistently praised by traditional media.
The media coverage of Meta's moderation efforts has been particularly negative for most of its history. Interestingly enough, Meta was also the first social media company to have reached a trillion-dollar-plus valuation.
Telegram will likely have to go through similar growth stages before it surpasses legacy platforms. As we rapidly rise in scale and significance, we shall solve any potential challenges the same way we do everything else — with efficiency, innovation and respect for privacy and freedom of speech.
Millions of people have been signing up and sharing content on Telegram in the last hour while Instagram and Facebook were down. Interestingly, Telegram is more reliable than these services — despite spending several times less on infrastructure per user.
We also have about 1000 times (!) fewer full-time employees than Meta, but manage to launch new features and innovate faster.
Throughout 2023, Telegram was unavailable for a total of only 9 minutes out of the year’s 525,600 minutes. That’s a 99.9983% uptime 🏅
10,000 subscribers of mine are now happily enjoying their Telegram Premium thanks to this giveaway I prepaid on Fragment a few hours ago. Congratulations! 🥳
As a result, my channel reached Level 9 and I was able to set a fancy emoji status ☕️ and a wallpaper suitable for a @nerd 🤓
😝 Next month, channel owners on Telegram can start receiving financial rewards from their work.
Broadcast channels on Telegram generate 1 trillion views monthly. Currently, only 10% of these views are monetized with Telegram Ads — a promotion tool designed with privacy in mind.
In March, the Telegram Ad Platform will officially open to all advertisers in nearly a hundred new countries. Channel owners in these countries will start receiving 50% of any revenue that Telegram makes from displaying ads in their channels.
To ensure ad payments and withdrawals are fast and secure, we will exclusively use the TON blockchain. Similar to our approach with Telegram usernames on Fragment, we will sell ads and share revenue with channel owners in Toncoin. This will create a virtuous circle, in which content creators will be able to either cash out their Toncoins — or reinvest them in promoting and upgrading their channels 🤑
📹 We've made some great improvements to video message recording on iOS. Now, you can enjoy clearer video quality, switch between front and back cameras more quickly, experience less camera shake, and have the ability to pause and resume recording. Plus, we've introduced one-time video messages.
However, a minor bug was identified during the feature's initial launch two days ago. If you're encountering any issues with video message recording, please make sure your Telegram app is updated.
💫 For our Telegram Premium subscribers, there's a mighty update: you'll now be able to see the 'last seen' of other users who share this information, even if you choose to keep your 'last seen' hidden. The same logic now applies for the ‘read’ times in private chats.
There are more new features in this update — they will remain secret until our official blog post is out later this month 🤫