We at Telegram have been very lucky to be able to define the messaging trends for the past decade.
Just imagine: a compact team of 30 people has been responsible for creating the majority of the features you now see in modern messaging apps. Our competitors have developed a habit of copying our designs, without any alteration, to the point where it's become a running joke in the community (my favorite recent meme is this one).
We take this imitation as a compliment — it shows we're leading the way. While our competitors try to catch up, we will keep implementing top-quality features. My next post is about one of them.
Just imagine: a compact team of 30 people has been responsible for creating the majority of the features you now see in modern messaging apps. Our competitors have developed a habit of copying our designs, without any alteration, to the point where it's become a running joke in the community (my favorite recent meme is this one).
We take this imitation as a compliment — it shows we're leading the way. While our competitors try to catch up, we will keep implementing top-quality features. My next post is about one of them.
For years, our users have been asking us to implement Stories in Telegram. More than half of all feature requests that we receive are related to Stories.
Initially, we were against this since Stories are already everywhere. However, Telegram wouldn't be Telegram if we didn't listen to our users and didn't innovate on existing formats.
So we will be launching Stories soon – in the Telegram way:
- Privacy. You will be able to define who can see each of your stories with granular precision: Everyone, only your contacts (with exceptions), a few selected contacts, or a list of Close Friends.
- Compact UI. Stories will be placed in an expandable section at the top of your chat list, which makes them easily accessible without taking away valuable space.
- Flexibility. It will be easy to hide Stories posted by any contact, moving them to the 'Hidden' list in your Contacts section instead of the main screen.
- Captions. In addition to making use of dozens of powerful photo and video-editing tools, you will be able to provide captions for your stories to add more context or links and tag other people.
- Dual Camera Support. Building on the success of Telegram's Video Messages, we're adding the option to post photos and videos taken by the front and the rear cameras simultaneously.
- Optional Ephemerality. You'll be able to choose when a story expires – in 6, 12, 24, or 48 hours – or permanently display stories on your profile page, with individual privacy settings for each.
- More suprises!🤩
The ability to save your stories to the profile page will make Telegram profiles more informative and colorful. You will not only be able to explore more content from your closest contacts, but finally discover more information about users you connect with in groups or channel comments.
Speaking of channels, they will benefit from more exposure and subscribers: once we launch the ability to repost messages from channels to stories, going viral on Telegram will become a lot easier.
Overall, following our internal tests of Stories, even the skeptics on our team started to appreciate this feature. We can no longer imagine Telegram without it.
Stories are in their last testing phase and will become available in early July. This will herald a new era on Telegram, where it will become even more fun and social than it currently is.
Check out a preview of Telegram Stories in the next post.
Initially, we were against this since Stories are already everywhere. However, Telegram wouldn't be Telegram if we didn't listen to our users and didn't innovate on existing formats.
So we will be launching Stories soon – in the Telegram way:
- Privacy. You will be able to define who can see each of your stories with granular precision: Everyone, only your contacts (with exceptions), a few selected contacts, or a list of Close Friends.
- Compact UI. Stories will be placed in an expandable section at the top of your chat list, which makes them easily accessible without taking away valuable space.
- Flexibility. It will be easy to hide Stories posted by any contact, moving them to the 'Hidden' list in your Contacts section instead of the main screen.
- Captions. In addition to making use of dozens of powerful photo and video-editing tools, you will be able to provide captions for your stories to add more context or links and tag other people.
- Dual Camera Support. Building on the success of Telegram's Video Messages, we're adding the option to post photos and videos taken by the front and the rear cameras simultaneously.
- Optional Ephemerality. You'll be able to choose when a story expires – in 6, 12, 24, or 48 hours – or permanently display stories on your profile page, with individual privacy settings for each.
- More suprises!
The ability to save your stories to the profile page will make Telegram profiles more informative and colorful. You will not only be able to explore more content from your closest contacts, but finally discover more information about users you connect with in groups or channel comments.
Speaking of channels, they will benefit from more exposure and subscribers: once we launch the ability to repost messages from channels to stories, going viral on Telegram will become a lot easier.
Overall, following our internal tests of Stories, even the skeptics on our team started to appreciate this feature. We can no longer imagine Telegram without it.
Stories are in their last testing phase and will become available in early July. This will herald a new era on Telegram, where it will become even more fun and social than it currently is.
Check out a preview of Telegram Stories in the next post.
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Every day, over 2.5 million new users sign up for Telegram, and earlier this year we’ve surpassed 800 million monthly active users. We are happy and grateful, even though this massive growth also means higher expenses on storage and traffic to serve our users.
Luckily, Telegram is super efficient when it comes to expenses and we had a great start with monetization last year. While not yet profitable (which would be impossible to reach on just the second year of monetization), Telegram is closer to profitability in absolute numbers than its competitors such as Twitter and Snap.
To fund Telegram’s continued growth until we reach the break-even point, this week we issued around $270 million worth of Telegram bonds as a tap of our existing bonds. Once again we've been lucky to have the participation of well-known funds with stellar reputations.
I personally bought about a quarter of the new Telegram bonds, investing tens of millions into Telegram’s growth. This comes in addition to the hundreds of millions I spent over the last 10 years to keep Telegram operational.
Some people suggested I should have instead bought a house or a jet. But I prefer to stay focused on my work, without “owning” anything (well, apart from Telegram, some Bitcoin and some Toncoin).
Hundreds of millions of people signed up for Telegram because they wanted an independent messaging platform that would put its users first. It is my responsibility – and my life’s work – to keep delivering this platform.
Luckily, Telegram is super efficient when it comes to expenses and we had a great start with monetization last year. While not yet profitable (which would be impossible to reach on just the second year of monetization), Telegram is closer to profitability in absolute numbers than its competitors such as Twitter and Snap.
To fund Telegram’s continued growth until we reach the break-even point, this week we issued around $270 million worth of Telegram bonds as a tap of our existing bonds. Once again we've been lucky to have the participation of well-known funds with stellar reputations.
I personally bought about a quarter of the new Telegram bonds, investing tens of millions into Telegram’s growth. This comes in addition to the hundreds of millions I spent over the last 10 years to keep Telegram operational.
Some people suggested I should have instead bought a house or a jet. But I prefer to stay focused on my work, without “owning” anything (well, apart from Telegram, some Bitcoin and some Toncoin).
Hundreds of millions of people signed up for Telegram because they wanted an independent messaging platform that would put its users first. It is my responsibility – and my life’s work – to keep delivering this platform.
In just a decade, Telegram gained over 800 million active users purely thanks to word of mouth. Through numerous updates and improvements over the years, Telegram has redefined what a modern messaging experience should be like.
The next step for Telegram is to go beyond messaging and spearhead innovation in social media in general. We should use our popularity to change the lives of billions for better, to inspire and uplift people on our planet.
Today’s gradual roll-out of stories for all users marks the beginning of this new stage in the history of Telegram. While this past decade was exciting, the next 10 years will be the time when Telegram reaches its true potential.
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Years ago, we built TON – a scalable and fast blockchain technology. TON was designed to serve hundreds of millions of social media users. Since 2020, the TON technology has been maintained and improved by the open source community.
Last year, we enabled our users to buy and sell Telegram usernames and IDs on Fragment – a TON-based auction platform. It was a phenomenal success. Telegram sold $120M worth of digital assets in auctions, while early buyers of some Telegram-related digital assets – such as Telegram anonymous numbers – have seen a 27x (!) increase in value after only 9 months.
This success showed the potential of Web 3.0 on Telegram. For the first time in history, users were allowed to own their social media identities directly. Now we want to integrate blockchain technologies deeper into Telegram. To do that, we worked with the folks from the TON community to add their TON Wallet to Telegram as a mini-app.
Starting this November, TON Wallet will be included in the settings and attachment menus for all our users outside the US and some other countries (if you added @wallet and have the latest version of Telegram, you can already see the wallet option in the menus). This step will allow developers to enable hundreds of new valuable features – similar to those pioneered on Fragment. TON Wallet, a third-party mini-app inside Telegram, will introduce a whole new dimension of Web 3.0 to hundreds of millions of Telegram users.
Last year, we enabled our users to buy and sell Telegram usernames and IDs on Fragment – a TON-based auction platform. It was a phenomenal success. Telegram sold $120M worth of digital assets in auctions, while early buyers of some Telegram-related digital assets – such as Telegram anonymous numbers – have seen a 27x (!) increase in value after only 9 months.
This success showed the potential of Web 3.0 on Telegram. For the first time in history, users were allowed to own their social media identities directly. Now we want to integrate blockchain technologies deeper into Telegram. To do that, we worked with the folks from the TON community to add their TON Wallet to Telegram as a mini-app.
Starting this November, TON Wallet will be included in the settings and attachment menus for all our users outside the US and some other countries (if you added @wallet and have the latest version of Telegram, you can already see the wallet option in the menus). This step will allow developers to enable hundreds of new valuable features – similar to those pioneered on Fragment. TON Wallet, a third-party mini-app inside Telegram, will introduce a whole new dimension of Web 3.0 to hundreds of millions of Telegram users.
Previously, public channels with more subscribers would appear higher in the search results. That system worked fine for a while, but was increasingly getting abused by spammers. That's why we now only count genuine subscribers of channels for ranking.
For example, channels with more Premium subscribers will generally rank higher. However, if a specific Premium subscriber joins too many channels, they won't give those channels as big of a search ranking boost. Of course, the new search also prioritizes results from your country.
The feedback on this change is overwhelmingly positive. Channels with an inflated subscribers count have become less visible, while useful groups and mini-apps are now attracting more users.
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The day has come. Telegram channels can now post Stories!
Stories on Telegram are more visible than in most apps, because they are displayed right on the main screen. Obviously, we couldn’t let channels flood users with Stories without reasonable limits: this would create too much noise in your Chats.
This is why we designed the Boost system. With Boosts, users can give their favorite channels the ability to post stories. More boosts mean more stories per day for a channel. Every 24 hours users can reassign their boost.
In the future, boosts will also unlock other features for channels, such as custom reactions, emoji statuses or custom backgrounds. We’ll also introduce more ways for channels to get Boosts.
To prevent abuse, only Premium users can boost channels. It shouldn’t be hard to collect Boosts for channels with real subscribers, while those with fake followers may struggle (larger channels need more Boosts to unlock stories).
Let the Boost Hunt begin!🏹
Stories on Telegram are more visible than in most apps, because they are displayed right on the main screen. Obviously, we couldn’t let channels flood users with Stories without reasonable limits: this would create too much noise in your Chats.
This is why we designed the Boost system. With Boosts, users can give their favorite channels the ability to post stories. More boosts mean more stories per day for a channel. Every 24 hours users can reassign their boost.
In the future, boosts will also unlock other features for channels, such as custom reactions, emoji statuses or custom backgrounds. We’ll also introduce more ways for channels to get Boosts.
To prevent abuse, only Premium users can boost channels. It shouldn’t be hard to collect Boosts for channels with real subscribers, while those with fake followers may struggle (larger channels need more Boosts to unlock stories).
Let the Boost Hunt begin!
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Hundreds of thousands are signing up for Telegram from Israel and the Palestinian Territories.
In addition to Arabic, we’ve just added support for Hebrew in the Telegram UI. Everyone affected should have reliable access to news and private communication in these dire times.
In addition to Arabic, we’ve just added support for Hebrew in the Telegram UI. Everyone affected should have reliable access to news and private communication in these dire times.
Some people are wishing me a happy "birthday" today.
But today, 10.10.2023, is not really the day when I was born.
I was actually born many years ago – today is merely an anniversary of my birthday.
Personally, I prefer to celebrate it as the 12th anniversary of my 27th birthday anniversary.
Don’t let yourselves get misled!🍸
But today, 10.10.2023, is not really the day when I was born.
I was actually born many years ago – today is merely an anniversary of my birthday.
Personally, I prefer to celebrate it as the 12th anniversary of my 27th birthday anniversary.
Don’t let yourselves get misled!
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Every day, Telegram's moderators and AI tools remove millions of obviously harmful content from our public platform. However, tackling war-related coverage is seldom obvious.
Earlier this week, Hamas used Telegram to warn civilians in Ashkelon to leave the area ahead of their missile strikes. Would shutting down their channel help save lives — or would it endanger more lives?
It’s always tempting to act on emotional impulses. But such complex situations require thorough consideration that should also take into account the differences between social platforms.
Unlike other apps that algorithmically promote shocking content to unsuspecting people, on Telegram, users receive only the content to which they specifically subscribed. As such, it's unlikely that Telegram channels can be used to significantly amplify propaganda. Instead, they serve as a unique source of first-hand information for researchers, journalists, and fact-checkers.
While it would be easy for us to destroy this source of information, doing so risks exacerbating an already dire situation.
Earlier this week, Hamas used Telegram to warn civilians in Ashkelon to leave the area ahead of their missile strikes. Would shutting down their channel help save lives — or would it endanger more lives?
It’s always tempting to act on emotional impulses. But such complex situations require thorough consideration that should also take into account the differences between social platforms.
Unlike other apps that algorithmically promote shocking content to unsuspecting people, on Telegram, users receive only the content to which they specifically subscribed. As such, it's unlikely that Telegram channels can be used to significantly amplify propaganda. Instead, they serve as a unique source of first-hand information for researchers, journalists, and fact-checkers.
While it would be easy for us to destroy this source of information, doing so risks exacerbating an already dire situation.
https://telegram.org/blog/reply-revolution
Bonus: you can now rewind / fast forward Stories by holding and sliding sideways (I wonder why other apps that have had stories for years hadn’t done this before
Bonus Bonus: our beloved Premium users (almost 3.5 million of them already) get to choose the color of their name and quotes in chats. Go orange this Halloween!
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Replies 2.0, Adjustable Link Previews, Name Colors and More
Today's update lets you quote specific parts of messages when replying, send your replies to other chats, add quote formatting to any text, configure link previews, choose a color for your account, and much more.