Du Rove's Channel

💡 In February 2022, I suggested to restrict Telegram channels in Russia and Ukraine, because they were being used for military propaganda. However, both our Ukrainian and Russian users vehemently opposed restrictions, prioritizing the freedom to access information, even when it’s biased. I supported our users’ choice 🫡 🚫 We still ban accounts and bots that collect coordinates to target strikes or post direct personal information with calls to violence. We don’t want Telegram to be a tool for violence — so please report such channels/bots to us if you see them ⛔️ ✉️ As for general news/propaganda channels, we receive official letters from Apple that indicate that certain changes here may be unavoidable, at least for users accessing Telegram on iPhones from Ukrainian SIM cards. As I explained in my interview, to stay accessible to its users, Telegram must consider requests coming from App Stores 🍎 🗽Were it entirely up to us, we would always give our users what they ask for: access to uncensored information and opinions so that they can make their own decisions. However, it's not always up to us 🥲

🤑 A tech blogger, Pavel Fedorov, just earned $80,000+ in TON 🤑 from selling his username @pavel on the Fragment auction platform. 📈 As an early adopter of Telegram, Mr. Fedorov claimed the @pavel username 9 years ago for free. He put it up for auction a week ago. After a fierce bidding war, the crypto entrepreneur @founder, who owns @crypto and many other Telegram handles, won the auction. In a surprising twist, @founder gifted me the @pavel name earlier today. 🤝 Congratulations to Pavel Fedorov, and many thanks to @founder for the generous gift. This shows how Telegram users benefit from direct ownership over their names. $350M worth of Telegram usernames and anonymous numbers have been sold in the last 18 months. 🆕 The newest versions of Telegram allow you to see when and for how much a username was sold. To check it out, you can go to my channel’s profile and tap on @pavel or @snow. A few minutes ago, I bought @paul on Fragment for 🤑 10,000 TON — to prevent more people from giving me generous gifts 😆

🏅Telegram is the #1 most downloaded mobile app in China on Android, according to Google Play. Access to Telegram requires a VPN in China, but Chinese people are smart — they like Telegram and find a way to use it. 🇨🇳 Last week, China forced Apple to remove apps such as Telegram from its Chinese App Store. We haven’t seen any decrease in downloads coming from China — and I don’t think Telegram was the main target of this change. 🍎 It was a move against Apple itself: the Chinese authorities are forcing more of their citizens to switch from iPhones to Android smartphones produced by Chinese companies such as Xiaomi. Unlike iPhones, most Android phones allow sideloading apps outside app stores — such as the direct version of Telegram — so more users from China will migrate to Android. Once again, Apple shot itself in the foot with its centralized “walled garden” app policies. As a result of this change, the iPhone market share in China will keep shrinking. Prioritizing profits over freedom for users is not a good long-term strategy👆

🐥🐥 The full version of my interview with Tucker is out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ut6RouSs0w 🎙

📺 As a leader of a politically neutral platform, it is my responsibility to speak to journalists representing different political views. In February, I did a 3-hour interview with a journalist of liberal views. On the same day, I spoke to Tucker Carlson, who is famously conservative. This way I can remain fair to all audiences and tell the story of Telegram to everyone. The interview with Tucker is coming out very soon. It will be in video format, which is quite rare for me — so be sure to check it out. I heard that Tucker is also launching an official Telegram channel, so let’s stay tuned for an announcement there 📣

🎨 Our newest update lets you make your own stickers right here on Telegram — no additional image-editing software needed. Just go to the recent stickers panel and select “+”. Creating sticker packs has never been so easy. The sticker platform has existed on Telegram since 2015, but it has now been truly democratized. There are 16 other new features we are shipping this month, and most of them are already included in the latest version of Telegram. But I’ll tell about them later — for now, I’ll let you focus on sticker creation 🎨

9️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ Telegram reached 900 million monthly users. Half of these 900 millions users open Telegram daily. According to DataAI, Telegram is the 🚩th most used and 🚩th 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. We’ve always believed in you. Thank you for believing in us too🙏

🍿 Big Telegram update with 8+ new features is out. The bot platform is entering a new era with the ability to add bots that can seamlessly manage personal and business accounts. All bot developers are welcome to check out the APIs and start building. The rest of the new Business features are just as juicy. My personal favorite is the ability to customize the empty chat with you (I’ve always wanted to replace the “No messages here yet…” text with something more fun and add a sticker I like). There are several features in today’s update that we haven’t described in the official blog, so soon we’ll publish another post to cover all that is new. It seems we are adding features faster than we can describe them 🚘 😂

💰 Last week, we issued $330M worth of bonds to ensure Telegram can keep expanding at an accelerated speed. This bond offering was oversubscribed, and we were delighted to have global funds of the highest caliber with impeccable reputations as participants. The terms of the bonds (when adjusted for the Federal Reserve rate) were the most favorable for Telegram in the history of our company. I am proud that every time we issue bonds we get better at this process. The increased demand for our bonds shows that global financial institutions value Telegram’s growth in audience and monetization. This will further solidify our position as an independent platform that is able to challenge the “Goliaths” of our industry.

All large social media apps are easy targets for criticism due to the content they host. I can’t recall any major social platform whose moderation has been consistently praised by traditional media. The media coverage of Meta's moderation efforts has been particularly negative for most of its history. Interestingly enough, Meta was also the first social media company to have reached a trillion-dollar-plus valuation. Telegram will likely have to go through similar growth stages before it surpasses legacy platforms. As we rapidly rise in scale and significance, we shall solve any potential challenges the same way we do everything else — with efficiency, innovation and respect for privacy and freedom of speech.

👨‍💻 This week we launched the first batch of Telegram Business features. Users can now convert their personal Telegram accounts into business accounts. As a result, they will be able to add their location and opening hours, organize chats with color labels, use automatic greeting/away messages and shortcuts for quick replies. That’s just the start — we are shipping more Telegram Business features this month. One of these features will revolutionize how people interact with chatbots. Telegram Business accounts will be able to seamlessly add chatbots as their invisible secretaries to respond to all or certain chats. With AI, these chatbots can bring customer service automation to an entirely new level. The new Bot APIs for developers will become available later this month, all for free. Stay tuned — more exciting stuff is coming for businesses and developers on Telegram this season.

Millions of people have been signing up and sharing content on Telegram in the last hour while Instagram and Facebook were down. Interestingly, Telegram is more reliable than these services — despite spending several times less on infrastructure per user. We also have about 1000 times (!) fewer full-time employees than Meta, but manage to launch new features and innovate faster. Throughout 2023, Telegram was unavailable for a total of only 9 minutes out of the year’s 525,600 minutes. That’s a 99.999983% uptime 🏅

This February, we redefined many-to-many communication by adding 9 new features for group chats. Now, groups can publish stories and save them as posts on their profile pages for all their members to enjoy. Group chats can also set their unique wallpapers and statuses, both visible to all their members. Group appearance can now be customized in detail: for example, group admins can choose a color and a logo for the group profile cover, or the style of links. All these features are already available and are unlocked by group members who 'boost' their favorite chats (boosters can get special perks in the groups). Groups that prefer not to ask their members for boosts can instead conduct giveaways, similar to what I did in this channel today. We wanted to include 5 more features in this update, but the App Store Gods were not in our favor. You will see these features very soon in our March update! 🍀

10,000 subscribers of mine are now happily enjoying their Telegram Premium thanks to this giveaway I prepaid on Fragment a few hours ago. Congratulations! 🥳 As a result, my channel reached Level 9 and I was able to set a fancy emoji status ☕️ and a wallpaper suitable for a @nerd 🤓

After my last post, some people expressed concern that, as a result of ad sales exclusively for TON, Telegram may end up holding an unhealthy share of Toncoin, which will be too concentrated for a decentralized ecosystem. We acknowledge these concerns and have come up with a solution. To limit Telegram’s share of TON at ≈10% of the supply, we’ll be selling the upcoming surplus of our TON holdings to long-term investors — under 1-4 years lockup and vesting plan, but at a discount to the market price. This way free-floating TON will get locked up, stabilizing the ecosystem and reducing volatility. Potential investors in TON have been actively trying to reach out to us through various means. To make the process of any TON sales from Telegram fair and streamlined, we set up a new email address [email protected], where large investors ($1M+) can express their interest. Thanks to the participation of more long-term holders, TON will remain stable and decentralized.

😝 Next month, channel owners on Telegram can start receiving financial rewards from their work. Broadcast channels on Telegram generate 1 trillion views monthly. Currently, only 10% of these views are monetized with Telegram Ads — a promotion tool designed with privacy in mind. In March, the Telegram Ad Platform will officially open to all advertisers in nearly a hundred new countries. Channel owners in these countries will start receiving 50% of any revenue that Telegram makes from displaying ads in their channels. To ensure ad payments and withdrawals are fast and secure, we will exclusively use the TON blockchain. Similar to our approach with Telegram usernames on Fragment, we will sell ads and share revenue with channel owners in Toncoin. This will create a virtuous circle, in which content creators will be able to either cash out their Toncoins — or reinvest them in promoting and upgrading their channels 🤑

The Saved Messages feature launched by Telegram 7 years ago has since become an industry standard. But now it’s time for the industry to move beyond the simple “sending a message to myself” concept we introduced years ago. This past week, we evolved Saved Messages into an advanced yet easy-to-use Bookmarks/Favorites/Notes service, with new options to organize and view saved content. This comes on top of many other features we launched this past month. Speaking of which, I personally love the animation of the new one-time voice and video messages — it is pure art. Enjoy! https://telegram.org/blog/new-saved-messages-and-9-more

📹 We've made some great improvements to video message recording on iOS. Now, you can enjoy clearer video quality, switch between front and back cameras more quickly, experience less camera shake, and have the ability to pause and resume recording. Plus, we've introduced one-time video messages. However, a minor bug was identified during the feature's initial launch two days ago. If you're encountering any issues with video message recording, please make sure your Telegram app is updated. 💫 For our Telegram Premium subscribers, there's a mighty update: you'll now be able to see the 'last seen' of other users who share this information, even if you choose to keep your 'last seen' hidden. The same logic now applies for the ‘read’ times in private chats. There are more new features in this update — they will remain secret until our official blog post is out later this month 🤫

🚀 5 million users are now subscribed to Telegram Premium — just 1 month (!) after we reached 4 million subscriptions. 🥳

🎆 I wish all our users peace, happiness, prosperity and inspiration in the new year. I have a very good feeling about 2024 ✨ Today we launched a new version of Telegram to let you congratulate your loved ones using our new, beautiful voice calls. The update contains a few surprises that we didn't cover in the blog – let's see if you can discover them 🎁 P. S. Stay healthy and don’t drink alcohol — don’t forget about the gym tomorrow 💪

🍭Merry Christmas, Telegrammers! The newest Telegram update lets you celebrate in style and congratulate your loved ones in new ways ❤️ With this update, you can also forward messages from channels to stories. Check out the full list of new features in our blog! 🧦 These are not all of our presents for you this festive season. Another major Telegram update is coming in the next few days 🛷 🎏

✨ Launched less than one and a half years ago, Telegram Premium has become the fastest-growing paid subscription in the history of messaging apps. The number of Premium subscribers has doubled in just 5 months and quadrupled in the last 12 months. Today it exceeded 4 million users. A big thanks to everyone who signed up for Premium! We add great new features every month for our Premium subscribers — check them out at @premium 💝

🎆 A major Telegram update with 11 new features is out, just 4 weeks after the previous one. Among my favorite new features are Similar Channels and Story Reposts. Both give content creators new ways to grow their channels organically within Telegram. Check out all the features in the blog post: https://telegram.org/blog/similar-channels While our iOS users can already enjoy the new features, the Android users are still waiting for the Google Play version to be reviewed by Google. If you use Android and don’t want to wait you can download the direct version of Telegram. This version offers faster updates, fewer restrictions, and more affordable Telegram Premium subscriptions.

👉Announcing a $200,000 giveaway! 🪙 To celebrate our new feature, I’m hosting a giveaway of 10,000 Telegram Premium subscriptions 🤑 In a week, 10,000 random subscribers of my channel will receive a Telegram Premium subscription for 6 months 🤱 I have already prepaid for this giveaway on Fragment with $200,000-worth of Toncoin I bought on a cryptoexchange. Enjoy! ☕️

Now every channel on Telegram can host FAIR giveaways. What’s a giveaway? ❓ It’s when someone promises to give out prizes to random followers 😏😏😏 Many giveaways on social media were scams. There was no way to prove the winner was chosen fairly 😐 Until now. Telegram is the first social media platform to natively support giveaways with guaranteed random selection + prepaid prize funds 🤑 Check out the demos here: https://telegram.org/blog/giveaways

💳TPS (Transactions Per Second) in blockchain networks. Details — https://blog.ton.org/100000-transactions-per-second-ton-sets-the-world-record-on-its-first-performance-test

🚀 TON set the record for the fastest blockchain in the world! 😎We were right to choose TON as the blockchain platform for Telegram. From a technological standpoint, competitors are years behind in scalability. Bitcoin is likely to stay, but other general-purpose blockchains look obsolete 👎 https://coincodex.com/article/33968/toncoin-ton-blockchain-breaks-record-for-worlds-fastest-network-beating-solana-polygon-visa-and-mastercard/

🔤🔠🔤🔤❗️Update Telegram to the latest version to see how replies and link previews should work in 2023. Since we invented these formats several years ago, the industry must have been waiting for us to show them the next step. The wait is over! 👿 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 🤌 — there must be some dark secret we’ll uncover soon 🔮). 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! ❤️

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.

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. Don’t let yourselves get misled! 🍸

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.

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! 🏹