The success story of Telegram - messenger with built-in "protection" from the authorities, customers and investors

Google has become interested in buying a free Telegram cross-platform messenger. One of the reasons for the interest may be the fact that the company does not have its own messenger (there are Hangouts, but according to the general opinion, things are not going well for him), writes The Secret of the Firm. Durov said earlier that he did not intend to negotiate the purchase or investment in his project.

According to the newspaper, in May 2015, Durov met with Google CEO Sundar Pichai to discuss the prospects of a search engine in the market of instant messengers. The initiator of the meeting, according to the interlocutors of "The Secret of the Company", was Google, which valued Telegram at more than $ 1 billion.
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update: The founder of Telegram called rumor information about negotiations with Google on the sale of Telegram. The representative of the messenger also denied the fact of meeting Durov with Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

The publication recalls the success story of Telegram and tries to explain its appeal to potential buyers and investors.

C low start

In October 2013, the popular Arabian blogger Khaled published several posts about the Telegram messenger just appeared in the App Store. Blogger posts have contributed to a surge in downloads - in a few weeks Telegram’s audience has grown to 100,000 users.

Saudi Arabia, like other Gulf countries, has become one of the growth points of Telegram. Bill Hyder, a developer from Saudi Arabia, wrote in his Twitter account: “Telegram is becoming popular. I know about two government agencies that asked their employees to register in the messenger. ”

Pavel Durov built his project marketing on the idea of ​​“security” under the slogan “Taking back our right to privacy” and in every way instilled in users confidence that no special services would be able to read their messages. All marketing plots around the messenger were built on the topic of security. And it worked - in June 2014, Telegram was named the fastest-growing startup in Europe, and in February 2015, Durov's service overcame the mark of 100 million users.

After a scandal broke out around the data published by former CIA officer Snowden in June 2013, Durov decided to concentrate on the security of communication. The elder brother Nikolay Durov wrote the information encryption protocol MTProto .

Durov stated that Telegram is in several jurisdictions and this avoids the pressure of the authorities of any country.

Bets made

Telegram started when the application came from Ukraine Jan Kuma WhatsApp was already popular all over the world. Another competitor - Viber - had tens of millions of users in Iran, Russia and other countries. In addition, local messengers developed in some regions: Hike in India, WeChat in China, Line in Japan. To become noticeable in the market, Durov needed to loudly declare himself. The emphasis on security and the “top secret protocol”, as already noted, played an important role.

In addition, Durov created an open platform based on the Telegram API, where any programmer can create clients and his own applications.

According to Priori Data, in 2015 in Italy Telegram was downloaded 2 million times on iOS and Android (although WhatsApp is still in the lead there and ranks first among all applications). Following the users, officials and ministries began to open their channels in the Telegram.

In 2015, WhatsApp is the most popular application in Brazil - according to Nielsen, about 70% of smartphone users used it. In February 2015, a Brazilian court ordered the messenger to be blocked, but the service was never turned off. Amid this news, 2.5 million local residents joined Telegram. According to Priori Data statistics, in 2015 Telegram received almost 10 million downloads on Android in Brazil (against 691,000 on iOS).

This was achieved thanks to the ZapZap service, the most successful application on the Telegram API (more than 6 million downloads only on iOS). Users of such applications are considered users of Telegram, because they are stored on the servers of Durov. In an interview with the Firm's Secret, ZapZap founder Eric Costa said that “ZapZap gave Telegram life in Brazil and turned it into a social network.” When a user likes an application, it sends an invitation and calls its friends - this way it is distributed. ZapZap has more than 20,000 user-created groups.

the Forbidden fruit

In 2014, Telegram showed rapid growth in Iran. Locals joke that the biggest migration in history has happened - from Viber to Telegram. Because of the Israeli roots of Viber, this service was blocked in Iran, and 20 million users gradually switched to the Durov messenger.

Iranian politicians turned to the inhabitants of the country in Telegram during the election campaign. Video of former President Mohammad Khatami was watched by 3 million users in 24 hours. “Telegram is much simpler and clearer,” said political political activist Ali Alemni to The Associated Press, who campaigned voters to join Telegram. Following the election, the authorities called Telegram one of the important channels that led them to victory.

With the growing popularity of the messenger, the authorities have questions to its authors. Iranian cyber police demands to transfer servers with user data to Iran and threatens to block; from time to time Telegram becomes partially or completely unavailable. The police have already arrested the administrators of 20 groups, accusing them of distributing “immoral content”.

The authorities' statements about blocking Telegram are for his benefit: the messenger is gaining more and more fans among freedom fighters. Statements about tightening censorship motivate users to search for more secure instant messengers, and first of all they think about Telegram.

Telegram several times attracted new users due to news about competitors. So it was when in 2014 Facebook announced the purchase of WhatsApp and the instant messenger was unavailable due to the influx of users for an hour and a half. Some users pointedly stated that they were leaving. On that day, Durov registered 5 million users.

Right to privacy

Telegram was launched in English with a calculation for an international audience under the slogan "Taking back our right to privacy" ("let's regain our right to privacy"). Over time, this inscription has disappeared, and now Durov uses a more streamlined formulation: "New era of messaging". Perhaps this is due to the fact that WhatsApp launched full end-2-end encryption and became more secure.

To confirm the security of the messenger, shortly after the launch of Telegram, Durov announced a contest: he would pay $ 200,000 to the one who hacked his correspondence with his brother in a secret chat.

In December 2015, the Electronic Frontier Foundation assigned the security rating of 4 out of 7 to the usual Telegram chat rooms, but 7 out of 7 to the secret chat rooms. “In our case, E2E or server encryption is slightly different. We also have cloud chats encrypted locally on the servers so that local authorities cannot access, ”said Durov in response to the“ Secret of the Firm ”question about what percentage of users use secret chats.

Durov was the first to launch such encryption. The phrase "secure messenger" users associate with Telegram. Durov opposes the authorities, but officials especially love his messenger. The Information edition has written about members of the San Francisco government who prefer Telegram because it is better protected.

Trick or treat

No matter how Durov promoted the new service, many of those who tried, become his real fans. Telegram's file and message transfer speeds are higher than others, which can be significant for residents of countries with slow Internet.

Telegram appeared within the framework of the non-profit organization Digital Fortress and was launched with the money of Durov. He still finances the project alone, earning about $ 300 million from the sale of his VKontakte share. According to Durov, the costs are more than $ 1 million per month.

In the near future, Telegram plans to earn on third-party applications with which it is possible to share revenue, just as it is done in VKontakte. In an interview, Durov said that he thought to monetize bots.

While Durov develops a service for personal money, the load on the servers increases and grows with the increase in the user base. He stated that Telegram could not be bought and even could not be invested in the project. Nevertheless, according to Sekret, several venture capital funds in Silicon Valley came out with an offer of investment.

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