Everything You Need to Know About Public Goods
On Jan 12, 2021, Telegram became the second-most downloaded app in the U.S. and the platform's founder, Pavel Durov, announced on his channel that 25 million new users had joined the app in 72 hours. The new users came from Asia (38 percent), Europe (27 percent) and Latin America (21 per centum). Some other eight percent are from the Middle Due east. The full number of users has since topped 500 meg.
The number of Telegram users started growing after U.South. President Donald Trump'southward accounts were blocked on January 7, 2020, by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms. Some other factor behind users flocking to Telegram is the new confidentiality clause on WhatsApp, whereby users' personal information is to be made available to Facebook (which owns WhatsApp). The update to the weather of use was after moved dorsum to May 15, 2021 post-obit an outcry from users.
"People no longer want to substitution their privacy for complimentary services. They no longer want to exist held hostage by tech monopolies that seem to recall they can go away with anything as long equally their apps accept a critical mass of users," was how Durov commented on all these developments.
How is Telegram different from other messaging apps?
Regular and group chats are only a small part of the messaging app's infrastructure.
For case, clandestine chats tin can be created on Telegram linked to a specific user's device - that is, they are not saved on the platform's servers and, at the user'southward asking, can be made to disappear afterward a certain period of time. A fourth dimension limit tin can be attack any photograph or video within these chats - on expiry they will also self-delete. Y'all can take screenshots, only if yous practise the app will warn the other user about it.
Instead of the usual communities, Telegram has channels. The key departure is the total absenteeism of algorithms. Under Telegram's approach, users themselves control their media usage: All messages are published past the channel chronologically. Neither does the app have the 'find' part pop in modern applications. It is assumed that users tin learn about interesting new channels either from messages forwarded by friends or other channels, or from external sources. Channels tin can be open or anonymous, posts tin can include comments and a public chat tin can exist linked to a channel.
Another interesting characteristic is that you can run into people by geolocation. If, for example, you find yourself in an unfamiliar urban center, are bored and desire to see someone, you can click on 'Contacts', select 'Find People Nearby' and you will see a list of everyone who is in the vicinity (and who has enabled this feature). Too, users periodically create chats for a specific location, be it a museum, a town square or a bar - y'all tin can likewise drop in, enquire a question or starting time chatting with a person nearby.
Telegram also has numerous bots that will summate the dollar rate for yous, allow you heed to whatsoever song from right within the app, create a personal news feed and so on.
Also, Telegram has a convenient desktop client and a web version that do not crave a working communication channel linked to a smartphone similar WhatsApp or Viber.
And who does all this belong to?
Pavel Durov
lukomore.org/Global Look Press
Co-ordinate to official reports, Pavel Durov, founder of the pop Russian social network VKontakte, set upwards Telegram along with his brother Nikolai. The first version of the app appeared in the App Store in August 2013. Pavel Durov withal claims that Telegram is growing and developing thanks to his personal investment (made from VKontakte) - in an interview with Fortune mag in 2016 he said he was spending ane one thousand thousand dollars a calendar month on supporting the messaging platform.
In 2014, Pavel Durov permanently stepped down from the post of CEO of VKontakte, sold his shares in the company and left Russia. In his own blog, he said the movement had come about following a change in the social network's shareholders in 2013. Prior to this, ane of the shareholders had started accusing Durov of working on his personal projection, Telegram, to the detriment of the social network.
Initially, Telegram didn't even support the Russian language and targeted a wider audience around the world - the messaging platform was merely adapted to Russian in 2017.
Why did Russian federation try to block Telegram?
Also in 2017, the FSB demanded that Telegram supply the coding keys for communications between users suspected of planning terrorist acts. Telegram representatives refused to share the information - they said it was technically incommunicable. As a consequence of this, in 2018, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, It and Mass Media [Roskomnadzor], the body responsible for monitoring the observance of laws in the Russian Internet, officially blocked access to Telegram in Russia. The messaging app was still attainable via VPN, all the same. Moreover, its developers before long learnt to bypass the block, so that information technology worked even without the need to connect to third-party services, although there were still exceptional malfunctions.
In June 2020, Roskomnadzor unblocked access to Telegram, declaring that the service "takes a positive view of the willingness to counteract terrorism and extremism expressed past the founder of Telegram". The visitor had "developed a system for averting acts of terrorism, while managing to preserve the confidentiality of communications", Durov wrote.
Durov to launch a Telegram-based cryptocurrency. Is this true?
Yes, merely not only a currency. Durov had been planning the launch of a whole blockchain payments platform, dubbed 'TON' (Telegram Open Network), which would comprise the Telegram messaging app itself, the Gram cryptocurrency and likewise data storage tools.
In 2018, Durov managed to concenter $i.7 billion from 175 investors for the project, promising them a payment of 2.9 billion Gram tokens later they had been issued. The platform was supposed to take been launched past the finish of Oct 2019, simply on Oct eleven, the United States Securities and Commutation Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit in the District Court for the Southern Commune of New York accusing Telegram of illegally circulating unregistered digital tokens which the SEC classed every bit securities, not currency.
In March 2020, the New York courtroom ruled that Grams were not a currency, simply a security and banned their issue and distribution to investors in the USA and throughout the earth. Durov signed a voluntary settlement understanding with the SEC under which he had to pay investors $i.ii billion. In May of the same yr, Pavel Durov announced the closure of TON, and in June he paid the unabridged debt.
What will happen to Telegram now?
In December 2020, Pavel Durov announced that, from 2021, Telegram was to start earning revenue - according to the app's founder, the process would be "unobtrusive" and all existing services would remain free to users and in that location would be no advertizement in online chats. Durov plans to brand money from additional functions for business teams and for users with more extensive requirements - for instance, paid-for stickers.
"Nosotros are going to offer our own ad platform for channels, ensuring convenience and confidentiality for users while enabling united states to encompass server and traffic costs," Durov wrote on his Telegram channel. The platform does not currently regulate ad on its channels.
In the wake of this declaration, in Jan 2021, a number of Western investors offered to buy upward a roughly 5-x percent share in Telegram against a total valuation of 30 billion dollars for the visitor. Durov turned downwards the arroyo, The Bong reported, citing its own sources. The website The Information also reported that Durov had been offered debt funding of $1 billion, but he has not taken a concluding decision on this. According to the news site, the debt could be converted to shares in an eventual IPO, while the cash itself is needed for the expansion and financing of Telegram earlier a share launch.
If the app is expanding and might be gear up for an IPO launch, does it hateful that everything is fine with Telegram?
Not quite. There seems to exist a real risk that Telegram will be removed from the App Shop - and then information technology would be much more hard for information technology to build upwardly its user base.
On Jan 17, 2021, the American non-commercial organization 'Coalition for a Safer Spider web' filed a lawsuit against Apple demanding the removal of the Telegram app from the App Store, the Washington Mail reported. According to the organization, extremist pronouncements were spread on the app in the run-up to the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and Telegram had taken no steps to cake these statements. Durov has not withal commented on the lawsuit, although Russian Federation Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already reacted to it.
"I've heard that Telegram has been threatened with losing the ways for providing its services. It's going to be interesting," Lavrov said.
Pavel Durov himself has hit out at Apple tree on more than than one occasion. In particular, he criticized the xxx-percent commission on the auction of third-party apps in the App Store. Durov says that Apple is censoring some apps, monitoring users and forcing app developers to bear witness more than advertizement in order to make money.
Furthermore, in January 2021, Durov criticized Apple and Google's decision to remove the Parler app, which is popular among supporters of U.S. president, Donald Trump, from their stores. Durov also chosen on all users to switch to Android.
"Apple is the more dangerous of the two, because it can completely restrict which apps you utilise, while on Android you can install self-hosted apps as APKs.<...> Every bit for iOS, we are working on a feature-rich web app which volition run in Safari almost as smoothly as the native app. Withal not the same thing, but would work in extreme cases..." Durov said.
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Source: https://www.rbth.com/science-and-tech/333299-all-you-need-to-know-about-telegram
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