Telegram
Telegram report
Introduction
] founded by the Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai.[18] Telegram client apps are available for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Windows NT, macOS and Linux.[16] Users can send messages and exchange photos, videos, stickers, audio and files of any type.
Telegram's client-side code is open-source software but the source code for recent versions is not always immediately published,[19] whereas its server-side code is closed-source and proprietary
Provides API
In March 2018, Telegram stated that it had 200 million monthly active users.[21] According to its CEO, as of April 2017, Telegram’s annual growth rate was greater than 50%
Admin features
privacy & encryption
Messages and media in Telegram are only client-server encrypted and stored on the servers by default.[23] The service provides end-to-end encryption for voice calls,[24] and optional end-to-end encrypted "secret" chats between two online users, yet not for groups or channels.
Telegram's security model has received notable criticism by cryptography experts. They criticized the general security model of permanently storing all contacts, messages and media together with their decryption keys on its servers by default and by not enabling end-to-end encryption for messages by default.[26][27] Pavel Durov has argued that this is because it helps to avoid third-party unsecure backups, and to allow users to access messages and files from any device.[28] Cryptography experts have furthermore criticized Telegram's use of a custom-designed encryption protocol that has not been proven reliable and secure.[
Telegram accounts are tied to telephone numbers and are verified by SMS or phone call.[50] Users can add multiple devices to their account and receive messages on each one. Connected devices can be removed individually or all at once. The associated number can be changed at any time and when doing so, the user's contacts will receive the new number automatically.[50][51][52] In addition, a user can set up an alias that allows them to send and receive messages without exposing their phone number.[53] Telegram accounts can be deleted at any time and they are deleted automatically after six months of inactivity by default, which can optionally be changed to 1 month and 12 months. Users can replace exact "last seen" timestamps with broader messages such as "last seen recently"
Secret chats have to be initiated and accepted by an invitation, upon which the encryption keys for the session are exchanged. Users in a secret chat can verify that no man-in-the-middle attack has occurred by comparing pictures that visualize their public key fingerprints.
According to Telegram, secret chats have supported perfect forward secrecy since December 2014. Encryption keys are periodically changed after a key has been used more than 100 times or has been in use for more than a week.[75] Old encryption keys are destroyed.
Cryptography experts have expressed both doubts and criticisms on Telegram's MTProto encryption scheme, saying that deploying home-brewed and unproven cryptography may render the encryption vulnerable to bugs that potentially undermine its security, due to a lack of scrutiny.
No evidence of any leaks or hacks
channels
Channels can be created for broadcasting messages to an unlimited number of subscribers.[68] Channels can be publicly available with an alias and a permanent URL so anyone can join. Users who join a channel can see the entire message history. Each message has its own view counter, showing how many users have seen this message. Users can join and leave channels at any time. Furthermore, users can mute a channel, meaning that the user will still receive messages, but won't be notified.
https://telegram-region.com/statistika-auditorii-telegram-na-yanvar-2018/
Content censorship
Telegram said that about 10 channels/groups have been deleted from Telegram everyday due to are categorized as negative contents.
"no calls to violence" Iran
"I think that privacy, ultimately, and our right for privacy is more important than our fear of bad things happening, like terrorism."
In November 2015, Telegram announced that it had blocked 78 public channels operated by ISIS for spreading propaganda and mass communication.[173][174][175] Telegram stated that it would block public channels and bots that are related to terrorism, but it would not honor "politically-motivated censorship" based on "local restrictions on freedom of speech" and that it allowed "peaceful expression of alternative opinions."
monetisation for individuals
https://admitad.academy/en/telegram-monetization/
Cross-promotion with other channels. It is a model when a channel buys ads on other channels. Nowadays it is the most common model of monetizing for the majority of the channel owners. Approximately 700 000 users join Telegram every month, therefore, the audience of channels is growing and channels buy advertising from each other to reach more potential subscribers. But what’s the point in it if they get only subscribers, but the investment doesn’t return? And if other channels buy advertising on your channel, it is most likely that you will spend these earnings on advertising your channel. Talking about prices: each channel owner sets the price, the more subscribers the channel has, the higher will be the price. Before buying promotion in a channel, check if its subscribers are “alive” — if a channel has 300 000 subscribers, but just 300 views of posts, it will be a waste of money to buy ads there.
Advertisers buy ads on channels. This situation is pretty common on other platforms like YouTube — an advertiser asks to promote its products on the channel, provides them and pays for it. But it is pretty early to use such model as Telegram is not developed enough for that, it can work well only on popular channels or channels of popular bloggers, but there are few of them in Telegram now.
Making money through CPA (through affiliate networks). The principles of how you can earn through affiliate network you can find in our article “Affiliate network for beginners: what it is and how to make money through it”. In short CPA (cost per action) is a model when an advertiser pays for actions performed by users who you attracted. For instance, if you had attracted a user to the website and then this user purchased something, you get a share of the sum of this purchase. In this process Telegram is a platform where you place the affiliate links to the website and attract potentially interested users to these links.
Monetisation for app
In December 2017, cryptocurrency blog Cointelegraph reported that Telegram was planning to launch a blockchain platform and native cryptocurrency.[183] In January 2018, TechCrunch confirmed the news, referring to multiple sources.[184]
The company put together an Initial Coin Offering (ICO)[185] to fund development of a new blockchain platform, to be called the "Telegram Open Network" (TON). The offering was organised as a SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens), selling futures on tokens to be called GRAM.[184] A 23-page white paper[186] and a detailed 132-page technical paper[187] for the plan were released.
In February 2018, during the first round of the ICO 2.25 billion tokens (45% of the total number of future Grams) were sold at a price of $0.38 per token. The minimum amount of investment to participate in this round was $20 million. Then the second round of token offering began. During the first part of this offering, the price of one token was $1.33. The minimum investment amount for participation in this round was $1 million, taking into account the volume of placement, it can be calculated that 640 million tokens were sold during this placement. That is, during the last two placements 2.89 billion tokens were sold (58% of the total number of future Grams).[188][189][190]
As of April 2018, the firm had reported raising $1.7 billion through the ongoing ICO.[191] Company officials have not made any public statements regarding the ICO. As of spring 2018, the only official sources of information were the two Forms D that Telegram filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.[192]
Only the pre-ICO rounds were conducted; the public ICO was cancelled.[193] The network has yet to be released.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/telegram-attracts-850-mln-in-second-round-of-ico
private & public groups
groups of up to 100,000 members.
MTProto protocol.
List of Features
- Bots
- Drafts are unfinished messages synced across user devices. One can start typing a message on one device and continue on another. The draft will persist in editing area on any device until it is sent or removed.[70]
- Stickers are cloud-based, high-definition images intended to provide more expressive emoji
- Secret chats
- In the end of March 2017, Telegram introduced its own voice calls. The calls are built upon the end-to-end encryption of Secret Chats. Connection is established as peer-to-peer whenever possible, otherwise the closest server to the client is used.
- Since version 4.0, released in May 2017, Telegram offers a dedicated video hosting platform called Telescope.[80] The round videos can be up to one minute long and autoplay.
- Others: Passport, Social Login, Live location
features released & impact those had on user growth
В октябре 2013 года популярный арабский блогер Халед опубликовал несколько постов о только что появившемся в App Store мессенджере Telegram. Посты блогера способствовали всплеску загрузок — через несколько недель аудитория Telegram выросла до 100 000 пользователей.
Саудовская Аравия, как и другие страны Персидского залива, стала одной из точек роста Telegram. Билл Хайдер, разработчик из Саудовской Аравии, писал в своём Twitter-аккаунте: «Telegram становится популярным. Я знаю о двух госструктурах, которые просили своих сотрудников зарегистрироваться в мессенджере».
Павел Дуров строил маркетинг своего проекта на идее «защищённости» под лозунгом «Taking back our right to privacy» и всячески вселял в пользователей уверенность, что никакие спецслужбы не смогут прочесть их сообщения. Все маркетинговые сюжеты вокруг мессенджера строились на теме безопасности. И это работало — в июне 2014 года Telegram назвали самым быстрорастущим стартапом Европы, а в феврале 2015-го сервис Дурова преодолел отметку в 100 млн пользователей.
После того, как в июне 2013-го вокруг опубликованных бывшим сотрудником ЦРУ Сноуденом данных разгорелся скандал, Дуров решил сконцентрироваться на защищённости общения. Старший брат Дурова Николай написал протокол шифрования информации MTProto.
Дуров заявлял, что Telegram находится в нескольких юрисдикциях и это позволяет избежать давления властей любой из стран.
В 2015-м WhatsApp самым популярным приложением в Бразилии — по данным агентства Nielsen, его использовало около 70% пользователей смартфонов. В феврале 2015 года суд Бразилии вынес постановление о блокировке мессенджера, однако сервис так и не отключили. На фоне этих новостей к Telegram присоединилось 2,5 млн местных жителей.
В 2014 году Telegram показал бурный рост в Иране. Местные шутят, что произошла самая большая миграция в истории — с Viber на Telegram. Из-за израильских корней Viber этот сервис заблокировали в Иране, и 20 млн пользователей постепенно перешли на мессенджер Дурова.
Заявления властей о блокировке Telegram пока идут ему на пользу: мессенджер обретает всё больше фанатов среди борцов за свободу. Заявления об ужесточении цензуры мотивируют пользователей искать более защищённые мессенджеры, и в первую очередь они думают о Telegram.
Telegram несколько раз привлекал новых пользователей благодаря новостным поводам, связанным с конкурентами. Так было, когда в 2014 году Facebook заявил о покупке WhatsApp и мессенджер оказался недоступным из-за наплыва пользователей на полтора часа. Некоторые пользователи демонстративно заявили, что уходят. В тот день у Дурова зарегистрировалось 5 млн пользователей.
Telegram запускался на английском языке c расчётом на международную аудиторию под лозунгом «Taking back our right to privacy» («вернём себе право на приватность»). Со временем эта надпись исчезла, и теперь Дуров использует более обтекаемую формулировку: «New era of messaging». Возможно, это связано с тем, что WhatsApp запустил полное end-2-end-шифрование и стал более защищённым.
types of groups which are most popular on Telegram (like, are users more males / females / a mix of both, and what subjects are the popular groups talking about)
Основным преимуществом создатели Telegram считают, как ни странно, не безопасность или скорость, а размер групповых чатов: они поддерживают до 200 участников одновременно.
Как говорят сами представители сервиса, «big chats are cute».
В WhatsApp размер группового чата имеет ограничение в 50 участников, во «ВКонтакте» — 30. Правда, вынести даже такой объём участников групповой беседы не каждому под силу.
https://www.telegram-group.com/en/
Concerns Over Future
Telegram’s selling point is security and privacy. These two ideas are so firmly rooted in the organisational setup that Telegram Team has to relocate from their original base in St Petersburg to various location and finally settling in Dubai.
There have been frequent run-ins with the government due to their privacy policy which saw ISIS conduct secret chats and control channels. Though this has been brought under control it depends mainly on the users as controlling private chats would be a violation of their privacy rules.
Links
https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/telegram-stats/
https://habr.com/en/post/300492/
https://tgram.ru/blog/top-100-russian-telegram-channels-september-2018/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(service)
https://secretmag.ru/trends/players/kak-durov-raskruchival-telegram.htm
https://tjournal.ru/tech/49880-telegram-facts
https://vc.ru/flood/8598-durov-on-money
https://admitad.academy/en/telegram-monetization/
https://www.feedough.com/how-telegram-works-makes-money/
BS ? https://cointelegraph.com/news/telegram-attracts-850-mln-in-second-round-of-ico