Telegram: Paper to Digital, We Have Come a Long Way
Telegram is synonymous with privacy and resistance wherever revolutions are happening. It has been around since August 2013 but not many cared, not until a few years ago.
Overview
Telegram was founded by Russian brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov in late 2013. 14th August was the day when Telegram came into being with quite a revolution: introducing with itself the concept of end-to-end encryption for every user - this happened at a time when encryption was considered reserved for the VIPs. This app gave the right to privacy back into the hands of users from mega corporations. That's not all, there's so much here. Come with me on a journey to explore Telegram even before the idea existed and understand why it will overtake WhatsApp.
The Durov brothers have created VK and Telegram. Building one major social media platform is difficult enough. After managing to achieve the feat twice, Durov has become a sort of global celebrity. The tale of how the enigmatic billionaire founded his businesses, grew fond of trolling, and eventually joined forces to fight governmental overreach has become folklore on the internet.
Early Days of VKontakte
V Kontakte or more popularly known as simply VK was inspired by Web2 boom that was in full swing across Silicon Valley. When VK launched in 2006, Facebook was about to hit 12 million users and Myspace reigned (just before being hit by Samy). VK was an attempt to bring Facebook to Russian cyberspace and much to its analogue across the pond, the company traces back its root to college campus. Yeah that's how the nickname "Mark Zuckerberg of Russia" thrust upon Pavel.
In 2000s, Russia was enjoying political freedom, rapid economic expansions, westernization and the normality that any citizen would want. VK brought Pavel lot of fame and money but also made him a target of the Kremlin. According to the New York Times, he's known as 'biggest celebrity entrepreneur'. VK got famous for being a liberal network in the face of authoritarian regime which gained it popularity.
Signs of trouble at VK
VK had over a hundred million users and ended up growing to about a 350-million users, enjoying record revenues thanks to in-app purchases and advertising. It's wide reach caught the attention of the government which wanted to clamp down dissidents (mainly spying on Ukrainian protestors). Pavel angered the authorities by his refusal in wake of 2011 protests. His response to them was this tweet.
Mail.ru group - a Russian tech conglomerate with close ties to Kremlin and significant backer in VK tried to consolidate its control. He called Mail.ru group 'a trash (holding) company. Post the hostile takeover, Pavel was subjected to a smear campaign and framed which led him to leave the country and settle elsewhere. Apart from his helm at VK, he's known for being a kind man who thinks out-of-box and wears all-black, like Neo from The Matrix.
VK was on the fifth and sixth floor of Singer House, an iconic building in Central St. Petersburg. In 2012, Pavel and a few other employees threw cash notes worth more than £1000 by turning cash into paper planes with each bill worth more than £50 bank note or 5,000 Rubles at that time. His response to the authorities at the time of leaving Russia:
Rise of Telegram
Pavel thought of something outside Russia-controlled network, which is global and helpful to everyone. This all happened while he was still in Russia. The brothers had a company in Buffalo, New York and flew some VK loyalists to join the team and work on the secret project. I don't know if that secret project was Telegram from the beginning but it was named telegra.ph and then Pavel, thinking of a secure and encrypted means of communication between people in which third-party cannot snoop came up with Telegram, which gained inspiration and traction because of his experience with KGB and Russian Police. It was in a way, a response to Kremlin, for their uninvited interference in VK.
Telegram launched for iOS on August 14, 2013 and shortly after went live on Google Play Store on October 20, 2013. Since then, Telegram is among the top five most downloaded apps, according App Annie. At the time of writing, Telegram has over 700-million active users and 2-million daily signups, according to Pavel.
Telegram as a powerhouse
Pavel has repeatedly ensured that the company doesn't surveil chats and doesn't cooperate with the governments which so far has been true and until Pavel remains the CEO, this can be vouched for. Telegram is something which strikes the semi-perfect balance between features and privacy. For example, a Telegram group chat can accommodate up to 200,000 users whereas WhatsApp is just 512 members.
Then come Telegram Channels or simply Channels which can distribute message to an unlimited number of people, much like Twitter. This particular feature has been used in protests of Hong Kong, Belarus and more recently to the war in Ukraine. The private nature of Telegram has made it a target of authoritarian regimes. In the year 2017, Russia tried blocking Telegram. 13 April, 2018 onwards, Roskomnadzor went full swing in banning Telegram that led to banning of millions of IP of other companies. After a successful failure over two years, Government of Russia started using Telegram for spreading information about Coronavirus. On July 18, 2020, Roskomnadzor lifted all sorts of ban on Telegram.
As soon as one agency gets to uncontrollably monitor private communications, soon enough this access falls into the hands of third parties - bribers, hackers, agents of other countries.
- Pavel Durov
Setbacks on the way
Not everyone loves something that flourishes and rises to fame so early. The same happened to Telegram too. Here are some so-called setbacks that Telegram faced over time and how Pavel & Team's intuitive idea solved the problems.
Telegram Open Network: This was a revolutionary technology that Nikolai Durov worked upon. The entire Telegram team gave its best into making this a reality. The code was so fast and slick that it could virtually replace any currency and be a thing of mass adoption. It was a decentralized equivalent of payment processing platforms. Remember this, more on it later.
Political Opponents: Telegram was blocked by multiple governments during ongoing protest because it was the safest app out there. Russia, Iran, Pakistan and so many countries involved in this. In a similar move, some might have heard German police infiltrated an ultranationalist group chat. No, Telegram did not cooperate in any way or in no way compromised. The authorities snuck into the group with their personal accounts being added to the chat and monitoring it, much like sleeper cells do, but this time it was Police.
Breaching of accounts: There were some cases hyped up so much that Telegram was compromised and can be hacked easily - all false. The account owners (I'm afraid even though high-profile) fell for a scam and gave away their login code (and two-step verification password, where applicable). If you see a compromised account, here are some tips to regain access.
Leaking of Iranian phone numbers: In a similar way, this happened not because of a vulnerability in Telegram's infrastructure but because some malicious actors were able to scrap phone numbers by adding Telegram contacts (after learning this, Telegram introduced limits). Not just this but some third-party apps were being used that offered in-built proxies. As people fell for it, their phone numbers were leaked by those apps.
ISIS & other extremists: Well, this is a well-known fact that terrorists use any app they get where Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal or any other encrypted app is considered by them. Telegram bans thousand of terror content (and anything that violates the ToS). All removals are published on this channel. If you come across anything that violates Telegram's Terms of Service, please drop a mail with all relevant details to abuse[at]telegram[dot]org.
But things were soon settled down because the point of failure was never Telegram in any case. A little here and there, due to some communication gap some problems may have arose, but then fixed with diligency. A fun fact: Telegram hosts more than 10 world leaders on its platform. This portrays how popular, efficient and safe Telegram is. Despite all the setbacks, it has performed at par with competitors.
Funding Telegram
Telegram has largely been funded by Pavel himself with his personal wealth. It is estimated that he spent ~ $1 million monthly to keep Telegram running - that includes their humorous Twitter admin's witty works also. It was hell lot of expense -- this happened when Telegram had ~ 500-million users, a few years ago.
In 2017, Telegram was working on Telegram Open Network -- a decentralized crypto currency platform. In 2018, it published the whitepaper. So, you may ask what was TON? Pavel puts it as, "TON was designed to share the principles of decentralization pioneered by Bitcoin and Ethereum, but to be vastly superior to them in speed and scalability."
Two years later, in June 2020, TON was scrapped because of US Court ruling (which was stupid). Telegram held the first Initial Coin Offering (ICO) around April 2018 raising over $1,7 billions. A few weeks before the launch of TON, the Securities and Exchange Commission put a restraining order from sale of Grams. After a lengthy legal battle, both sides unfortunately didn't come to mutual agreement which resulted in scrapping TON. Pavel has put a detailed post here.
The result of losing and termination: paying termination amounts amounting to $1.22 billion and a whopping fine of $18.5 million. Telegram followed by paying the fine and repaid investors $770 million and converted $443 million into a one-year debt at 10% interest, raising its total liabilities to $625.7 million. On 10 March 2021, the company made the placement of 5-year bonds worth $1 billion to cover the debts it had to return by 30 April 2021.
Apart from this, Telegram raised ~$1 billion in debt by selling bonds as a part of monetization policy. Here are a few questions asked by some people. I'd be glad to answer them.
"Telegram promised to be free forever. No ads. No subscription fees." I'd say that would have been the case if TON was not scrapped. It would serve as a way to bring in revenue. 8 years the app was funded by Pavel when there was no stream of revenue -- it was possible of savings and Bitcoin prices higher then which helped in conversion. Regardless, TON threw Telegram out of plan.
Pavel is a billionaire with gross $15.1 billion according to Forbes this year distributed over in other assets like his office houses, yachts, private jet and other things. Given the fact that Telegram is running for more than 700 million users, the cost of operation have gone up. It's no more just $1 million dollar a day.
He didn't keep his promise. There are ads and subscription. I don't want both. If you have the same thing to say, its your choice - do as you wish to. There are nothing new in ads, they're just fixing it. In any other chat app that you might have seen, the ads are all around and they are banners. In Telegram, that's not how it is. It's just pure text this side and limited up to 160 words. Telegram did so much for you. The least you can do is watch ads once a month or week and help them.
Telegram Premium and the way ahead
In the beginning of June, Telegram Premium was launched to fund the further development of Telegram and keep it freemium. Exciting features are being launched since Premium and hopefully things will move forward in an awesome way. To answer the original question, Telegram will leave behind WhatsApp soon because WhatsApp is not able to keep up with current changes and Telegram clearly has the first mover advantage. A detailed summary will show up on this page.
There are lot more interesting things coming to Telegram and soon the introduction of Web 3 which will bring the integration of TON. New usernames, better features and fun. There's excitement ahead! WhatsApp is still struggling with communities, no edit, the worst thing "this message was deleted" and ultra small groups, no call privacy settings and many more are just killing WhatsApp. Make the switch to Telegram now. You should not use WhatsApp anyways, find out why here.