Telegram reached 900 million monthly users

Half of these 900 millions users open Telegram daily. According to DataAI, Telegram is the 6th most used and 6th 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.

New Telegram Monetization System

A source close to Telegram talked to Durov's Code on the specifics of the new monetization system. Here are the main points of the article :

• The Telegram Advertising Platform  now allows purchasing ads only with TON. Payment by fiat currency remains available only to advertising agencies: their personal accounts on the Telegram website still allow this.

• Ads purchased with TON can only be targeted to specific channels. It is impossible to target them to any topic or location. Such ads cannot contain external links, but the entry threshold for buying them is only 20 TON.

• Ads purchased with TON aren't displayed to channel subscribers if the phone numbers linked to their accounts are issued by Russia, Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, or Germany.

• The "Monetization" tab is available in the channel statistics section only if at least half of the channel's subscribers have phone numbers issued outside of Russia, Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, or Germany, and the total number of channel subscribers exceeds 1,000. The location of the channel owner and the phone number of their account do not affect the display of the "Monetization" tab.

• Even if the "Monetization" tab is not displayed on a channel, the channel owner's account will still receive funds from ads purchased with TON and shown to their channel's subscribers. However, they will not be able to withdraw these funds until the conditions from the previous point are met.

Introducing Telegram Business

Starting today, anyone can turn their Telegram account into a business account – and get access to business features, such as opening hours, location, quick replies, automated messages, custom start page, chatbot support, and more.

Introducing Telegram Business

Telegram has long allowed developers to build powerful bots and mini-apps which were widely used by businesses.

Starting today, any user can easily use business features — without any coding skills.

Hours and Location

Businesses can display their hours of operation and show their location on a map.

Users will know where to find you and immediately see if you're open.

Start Page

Businesses can customize their start page for empty chats, choosing which text and sticker people see before they start a conversation.

This lets you showcase info about products and services or welcome customers with branded artwork.

Quick Replies

Telegram Business allows you to create quick replies. Quick replies are shortcuts for sending preset messages that may contain several messages and support text formatting, links, stickers, media, and files.

This helps you quickly send information that your customers often need – like a schedule of classes or a PDF with your menu.

Typing a / in the message bar shows a panel with all of your quick replies – that you can send or edit in one tap. This only works in private chats, not groups.

Greeting Messages

For more automation, you can set a greeting message that will be sent to users who contact you for the first time. This will ensure they get an instant reply with important info – or just a friendly hello. 

Your greeting may also include answers to frequent questions or more details about your business.

You can specify a period after which a new message will result in your greeting being sent again.

Away Messages

You can also set an away message to be sent when your business is closed or while you're on vacation.

This way people will always know when they can expect a response from your business.

To prevent sending business messages to friends, family, or employees, you can limit any automated messages to exclude specific chats or entire chat categories.

Tags for Chats

With Telegram Business or Premium, you can add colored labels to chats, giving them unique tags based on the chat folders they are in.

This helps you quickly differentiate between customers in your chat list based on their status, needs, or priority level.

All Telegram users can create custom chat folders to organize their chats – adding separate tabs to the chat list for Work, School, News and more.

Links to Chat

To make it even easier for customers to reach out, you can create links to chat with your business – like a button to reserve a table or track an order. When tapped, these links instantly open a chat with you and paste a suggested message for the user.

You can use these links both inside and outside of Telegram – from a link on your site to a QR code on a restaurant menu.

Each link shows how many times it was tapped so you can track its performance.

Chatbots for Business

Business users can connect Telegram bots that will process and answer messages on their behalf. This allows businesses to seamlessly integrate any existing tools and workflows, or add AI assistants that manage their chats.

When adding a chatbot, you can configure which chats the bot can access – such as excluding all chats with your contacts, or only responding to new chats.

This opens a new era for Telegram Bots – we welcome all developers to create new services that will help businesses automate and improve their communication with Telegram users. See our Bot Manuals for details.

Telegram will be introducing new features for businesses in the coming updates. For the moment, all Telegram Business features are available for free to Premium subscribers. You can find them in Settings > Telegram Business.

Supreme Court of Spain Suspends Order to Block Telegram

Today, the Supreme Court of Spain suspended its order to block Telegram in the country as it awaits a police report on the impact of the temporary ban on users.

Judge Santiago Pedraz instructed the national police to prepare a report on "the characteristics of Telegram, as well as the impact of the temporary suspension on its users." As a reminder, the order to block Telegram in Spain was issued on Friday, March 22.

New Telegram Bond Issued for $330 Million

Pavel Durov announced that last week Telegram had issued bonds worth $330 million to accelerate the development of the messenger. The applications for bonds placement were oversubscribed, and on top of this, the majority of the buyers consisted of high-tier, high priced funds.

Telegram has previously issued bonds on:

• March 2021: The first bond placement for $1 billion.
• April 2021: Bonds placed for an additional $750 million.
• July 2023: Bonds were issued for $270 million, about a quarter of which were purchased by Durov himself.

Telegram Business Features

In the upcoming Telegram update, users with a Premium subscription will gain access to a set of business oriented features. Users will be able to specify the location and opening hours of their business, prepare welcome messages, messages to be sent automatically to clients while you are away, and use quick replies.

Telegram's Co-Operation with Malaysia

On Saturday, March 2, Malaysia's Minister of Communications held a personal meeting with Pavel Durov in Dubai. The news was brought to attention by Durov's Code.

The main topics of the meeting were platform regulation and the latest technologies, including artificial intelligence. Durov expressed interest in further discussions about opportunities for cooperation with the Malaysian government to optimize the regulatory aspects of the platform and promised to expand Telegram's activities in the country.

Pavel Durov also stated their platform's readiness to collaborate with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission to improve regulation and join forces in combating fraud and gambling. Last May, Malaysia's Minister of Communications reported that Telegram "did not want to cooperate" with the ministry, despite numerous requests for a meeting.

Statistics for 2022 indicate that Malaysia has 32 million Internet users, of which 28 million are social media users. Telegram is used by 56% of Internet users in the country, providing a rough estimate of between 15-18 million users in Malaysia.

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Today Telegram turns 10 years old

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.

Pavel Durov on Brazil’s Block on Telegram

Pavel Durov recently made a post in his channel in which he recalled that Telegram’s mission is “to preserve privacy and freedom of speech around the world”.

According to Durov, Telegram has always been on the side of protecting privacy and freedom of speech, no matter in what country it operates. When local laws contradict these principles, the messenger is forced to leave the market. For example, earlier, Telegram was banned in China, Iran and Russia because of its principled position on the issue of human rights.

A court in Brazil has requested data that Telegram is technically unable to provide, and the company is appealing the decision. Durov also noted that no matter how much it costs, Telegram will protect the interests of its users in Brazil and their right to private communication.

Ability to share a folder

In the beta version of Telegram for Android, you can now share folder-based collections of your chats with other users.

Some Features:
• You can set several links for your folder with different sets of groups and channels that are included there initially.
• Private chats and bots cannot be shared.
• You can share access to a private group or channel with users only if you have administrator rights there with the ability to manage invitation links.
• You can only share folders that do not include chats by type (Contacts, Non-Contacts, Channels, Groups, Bots) and that do not contain excluded chats.

• If a folder author adds new groups or channels to the same collection that a user has used, that user will be prompted to join them.
• You can share a folder with others not only using a t.me/addlist link, but also via a QR code.
• Users without Telegram Premium can create links for only two folders, and with a subscription — for twenty folders. The limit also applies to the number of collections that you can add to your account.

Note:
• The application does not warn the user against accidentally adding a private group or channel to a collection.
• If the collection contains a simple group, then after creating a link to the folder, it is automatically converted into a supergroup with all the ensuing consequences.

Telegram fined €5.1M by Germany

Germany announced Monday that it is issuing fines of 5.125 million euros ($5 million) against the operators of the messaging app Telegram for failing to comply with German law. The Federal Office of Justice said Telegram FZ-LLC hasn't established a lawful way for reporting illegal content or named an entity in Germany to receive official communication. Both are required under German laws that regulate large online platforms.

German officials said they have repeatedly failed in their attempts to serve papers to Dubai-based Telegram, despite support from authorities in the United Arab Emirates. A Germany-based law firm has since declared that it represents Telegram, but this wasn't enough to prevent the fines being issued, the Federal Office of Justice said. German federal police warned earlier this year that the app is becoming a “medium for radicalization,” used by some to target politicians, scientists and doctors for their role in tackling the coronavirus pandemic.

“The operators of messaging services and social networks bear a particular responsibility for acting against incitement to hatred and violence on their platforms,” Justice Minister Marco Buschmann said in a statement. “These legal requirements and this responsibility can't be avoided by trying to be unreachable.” The fine can be appealed.

Telegram Web 3.0 Is Coming

Two test NFT collections of Telegram usernames have appeared on the Getgems website. Durov’s Code found that the mint of the first NFT-usenames started on 11 October. The first collection called “Telegram usernames” consists of 24 usernames, such as erevan.t.me and mmm.t.me. All of them are currently unavailable for purchase. We have only found 1 NFT username in the debug collection. The test buying and selling of Telegram usernames is provided by a wallet, which the TON Explorer service marks as a Telegram Team.

Messages on behalf of channels with Premium subscription

Users have reported that accounts without an active Premium subscription can no more comment on channel posts or send messages in groups on behalf of a channel. A close source to the Telegram development team talks about that decision this way:

“Since the introduction of this feature, it has been difficult to assess the scale of the scams made.

80% of the comments made and messages sent on behalf of channels were identified as spam. Previously, channel and group administrators suggested removing this feature entirely, but instead of that, we have limited it to those who have an active Premium subscription. Hopefully, this will reduce the spam operations that take advantage of this feature, without having to entirely drop the feature.”

Telegram is working on video stickers

An API Schema update revealed a mention on video stickers. Likely, users will be able to create stickers from regular raster videos. We can assume a video format with transparency support will be used. One of the most popular such formats is WebM. Currently all animated stickers are vector. To create your own animated stickers for Telegram, you need Adobe After Effects skills. Video stickers will make animated stickers easier to create, will allow to use camera footage or, for example, 3D animation.

Credit: @tginfo

Telegram Down: Several Users Reported Outage On Twitter, Issue Fixed

Several users reported facing issues with Telegram, the instant messaging platform. The issue began on January 17 2022 and lasted for a couple of hours. However, Telegram acknowledged the issue and fixed it soon. The outage was limited to certain regions around the world, including India. Users reported the Telegram outage on Down Detector as well. Keep reading to know more about the Telegram down the issue and when was is resolved on January 17, 2022.

According to Down Detector, users started facing issues with the instant messaging platform Telegram from 07:50 PM IST on January 17, 2022. Half an hour later, the number of reports peaked at 4,464 and then they declined by 12 AM midnight on January 18, 2022. As mentioned on the Down Detector website, about 45% of reports were about the application not functioning properly while another 36% were about server connection related problems. About 19% of users faced issues with the website as well. While these issues were reported at the Indian portal, the global Down Detector portal reports only 446 reports at the peak of the issue.

Telegram filed for enforcement of fines in the amount of $148.000

The bailiffs opened new cases against Telegram on the enforcement of fines, for a total of $148.000, because it refused to remove content prohibited in the Russian Federation. According to the data bank of the Federal Bailiff Service (FSSP), based on the decision of the Tagansky Court of Moscow dated December 20 2021, three enforcement proceedings were initiated against the company to collect $67.000, $27.000 and $54.000 in fines. As reported, in mid-December 2021, Telegram fully paid off the debt in fines for the amount of $200.000.

Source:@tginfo

Telegram fixed Reproducible Builds on Android

Earlier we reported that few latest versions of Telegram for Android couldn't be verified to be compiled from the official source code, since Reproducible Builds were broken by developers' mistake. Version 8.4.3 fixes reproducibility: we were able to verify that installation packages for Telegram for Android from telegram.org and Google Play use the source code published in the official repository. This means the Telegram developers didn't add any hidden functionality that would be missing in source code.

source:tginfo

Telegram works on message translation through its own servers

The new API schema data on the Telegram website indicates that in future versions of the messenger, translations will be made through the Telegram servers. In the current version of the application, translation on iOS is done via Apple Translator, and on Android — by direct requests to Google Translate. The language of the message is detected on-device. According to Durov's Code , Google Translate in Telegram for Android is used in a quirky way, with a workaround to not pay the service fee, as a temporary measure, while the messenger team is working on translation through their servers.

What technology will be used is still unknown. Language detection will most likely continue to be on-device.

source: @tginfo

A Fake Telegram Installer Is Distributing Harmful Purple Fox Malware On Computers

A new way to hack computer systems has been found. According to a report published by an anti-malware platform called Minerva Labs, fake Telegram messenger applications are being circulated on the internet to distribute the Purple Fox malware. When downloaded, the malware escapes the anti-virus system installed on a computer and can execute a transfer of information without the consent or knowledge of the user.

As mentioned in the report by Minerva Labs "We have often observed threat actors using legitimate software for dropping malicious files. This time however is different. This threat actor was able to leave most parts of the attack under the radar by separating the attack into several small files, most of which had very low detection rates by AV engines, with the final stage leading to Purple Fox rootkit infection." The malicious Telegram installer is a compiled AutoIt script and is floating on the internet with the name "Telegram Desktop.exe" and hence, users are advised to beware.

Sponsored Posts in Third Party Clients

On the official website of the messenger an announcement has appeared regarding the display of sponsored messages in third-party Telegram applications.

Developers using the Telegram API must maintain and start displaying official sponsored posts correctly in their apps by January 1, 2022.

Using the Telegram API will continue to be free for all developers. The rules regarding monetization in third-party applications remain the same: developers are allowed to monetize their efforts through their own advertising or other legal means, provided that all monetization methods used in their applications are clearly mentioned in their app store descriptions.

If the rules are ignored, Telegram will disable applications that violate them.

Sponsored messages in third-party apps

Telegram continues to grow worldwide, in part thanks to third-party apps using the Telegram API. To cover the increasing costs that come with this growth, Telegram added sponsored messages – a paid privacy-friendly way to promote bots and channels.

Third-party developers using the Telegam API are required to support and properly display official sponsored messages in their apps by January 1, 2022. Unfortunately, Telegram cannot financially sustain third-party apps that do not display sponsored messages and they will have to be disconnected.

Telegram's API usage will continue to be free of charge for all developers. The rules regarding monetization in third-party apps remain the same: developers are allowed to monetize their coding efforts through advertising of their own or other legitimate means, provided that all the methods of monetization used in their apps are prominently mentioned in their app store descriptions.

Credit: @tginfo