Telegram: User Growth and Popularity of the Platform
telegramThere are loads of social media messaging platforms to contact people through, but Telegram has been growing tremendously and securing a place in the market for itself.
Telegram is an online instant messaging service that allows users to send messages, share files and facilitates to make voice and video calls.
Telegram was founded by both Nikolai and Pavel Durov in the year 2013 who belonged to Russian social media platform VK which was initially headquartered in St Petersburg now changed to Dubai, after stints in London, Berlin, and Singapore.
There has been a close competition between Telegram and WhatsApp in terms of the features. Telegram differs from WhatsApp in allowing its users to access accounts from multiple devices. Telegram owners also claim that its multi-data infrastructure and encryption is more secure than the Facebook-owned app.
Telegram User Growth
Telegram's Peculiarity
Why Telegram is in the Lead?
Telegram Features
FAQ's
Conclusion
Telegram is a simple, straightforward messaging solution that helps its users to receive the media files so that they can download them for free. It also provides some global groups that can accommodate up to 200,000 members. Telegram associates with cross-platform connections, programmable bots, and high levels of customization.
Telegram User Growth
All the users and non-users of Telegram can see how rapidly it has been grown in the world of online messaging. It also anticipates some extraordinary milestones to be hit over the next few years. Telegram is targeting around 1-2 billion users by the end of 2022.
Telegram has already completed 1 billion user downloads and becomes the 15th app to do so globally, as reported on August 31, 2021. India has a 22% share in the total downloads of Telegram, which is followed by Russia and Indonesia, with 10% and 8% downloads respectively.
Telegram proved to be popular from the start on certain levels and had reached 100,000 users by October 2013. It was launched in August of the same year on iOS and October on Android. This was a great kickstart for Telegram.
By the month of March 2014, the app hit 35 million Monthly Active Users. There were 15 million Daily Active Users, rising to almost 50 million by the end of the same year. The exponential growth of Telegram was doubled by February 2016, with eye-catching growth occurring from 2015 onwards.
The stats say that almost 2.2 million residents of urban cities used the Telegram platform daily on mobile devices in the year 2017. With all the rigorous growth in next two years, in March 2019, the figure reached 4.5 million. By the year 2017, Telegram saw around 180 million operating Telegram users and another 20 million users were added in the list by the end of March 2018.
In March 2019, it was reported that Telegram added 3 million new users over 24 hours during Facebook outages, including WhatsApp. There was a rise of the newly registered users that went up to at least 1.5 million users on the platform every passing day.
Telegram's Peculiarity
The only issue with Telegram is that it’s not as popular as WhatsApp but this might not always prevail in this era of competition. Telegram is gaining speed, thanks to its attention to providing users with end-to-end encryption.
Telegram aces its features when it comes to business. The app concentrates on embedding privacy and integrates added security into the messaging strategy. For example, users can remove the option to screenshot conversations, and opt to send secret messages that disappear after a certain point in time.
Telegram also offers an advantage of fun additional features. Users can use stickers while messaging to add context to a conversation.
Telegram has a unique feature called channels, which is pretty much similar to the experience on apps like Microsoft Teams or Slack. Channels are a familiar means for groups in this business space to stay updated with what’s happening in their environment and current affairs. In addition to this, any files that are shared in the respective channels or instant messages are also saved to the cloud automatically, so there is no hassle of re-uploading the files between conversations.
Telegram has also offered several customization options that WhatsApp did not, options like to switch phone numbers when necessary and provide that new number to users and coworkers instantly. User will also be able to choose a range of languages for the app that is different from the main language of the phone.
Why Telegram is in the Lead?
- Media compression to save the device's space
- Cloud storage for file sharing
- Secret chat for complete privacy
- Group member numbers can be larger
- Multiple Channels to connect with multiple groups
- Multi-platform support
- Built-in Bots ready to help
Telegram Features
There are certain features of Telegram, which are directly related to the growth of the platform and its popularity among the users.
1. Group member capacity
The group member capacity in Telegram was 200 initially. The numbers then rose to 5000. Now, a Telegram group can consist of up to 200,000 members.
Telegram provides unlimited storage to successfully store all the user texts, images media files, documents on their cloud. Users can also log out and log in any number of times from any number of devices simultaneously without losing any data, they don’t need to worry about backup. They can also view the active sessions and keep a track on which devices the user is logged in. Therefore, the user can download any file anywhere.
2. Media Compression
Users can choose whether to compress the file or send the uncompressed version forward.
3. Channels
A channel is nearly similar to groups, which can accommodate an unlimited number of members, the creator of the channel decide who can post and other members can view them.
4. Username Feature
Users can communicate with anyone on telegram even if they don't share the contact number. This ensures the privacy of the user’s contact number.
5. Bots
Bots are pieces of programs based on AI and Machine learning at a small level. They can perform various tasks, including an image bot that can fetch images from the name. Some popular bots are Image bot, sticker bot, gif bot.
FAQ's
Who owns Telegram?
Telegram is owned by the same two people who founded the company in Russia back in 2013, Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai. Pavel is also the company's CEO.
Why do people use Telegram?
The reason for this is Telegram's enhanced use of the cloud. Essentially, it stores all of your messages and photos on a secure server. This means you can access them from any connected device, making Telegram much more multi-platform friendly than other chat apps like WhatsApp. Another security feature is usernames.
Why use telegram over WhatsApp?
Even though WhatsApp has more than 1.3 billion users worldwide, the features offered by Telegram like secret chat, self-destructing messages, encrypted backup ensure more secured chats. Apart from security features, Telegram is also ahead of WhatsApp in terms of other features like Dark Mode and larger group capacity.
How much money does Telegram make?
The venture founded by the Russian duo of brothers Pavel Durov and Nikolai Durov is valued in the range of $3-5 Billion and according to the founders will never be up for sale. These facts are astonishing since Telegram spent zero cents on promotion and the user base is growing organically based on the product.
How does Telegram make a profit?
Telegram does not generate revenue as it stands, with a purported commitment to keeping the company free of the influence of money. As of September 2019, the funding is 100% privately generated by Pavel Durov.
Conclusion
Telegram has been closely competing with the Facebook-owned WhatsApp, and its enticing features often make it difficult for the users to decide which platform they should rely upon. Nonetheless, Telegram has seen significant growth over these years, and there is always more to come!
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