This is an age of social media platforms. There are only a few people in the current world who are not on social media platforms. What is the first thing you do after you wake up? Grab your phone and scroll down through the homepage of your social media accounts. This is something that everyone is guilty of. But no one can help it, that’s how addicted people have become to social media platforms. If you observe you will find that people don’t have one social media account. You will see that they have multiple social media accounts on different social media platforms. Because different social media platforms offer different things. If you want to connect to people from your childhood or college days. You can find them through Facebook. Facebook was created so that it can connect people across the globe.
If you want to follow what your friends and favorite celebrities are up to you will be using Instagram. It is one of the few social media platforms that became popular very quickly. Instagram changed the way people posted photos and stories. But what is the common thing that is lacking in all of these platforms? It is privacy. You may think that you are safe on some of these social media platforms but it is far from the truth. Everyone knows why Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of the US Congress. Some people might argue that Whatsapp is a safe social media application. But they may think otherwise after they know that it is also owned by Facebook. So people feel like there is no alternative for Whatsapp but there is. Telegram is a far better messaging platform compared to Whatsapp.
Wanna know why? Let’s dive into the topic.
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What is Telegram?
Telegram is an instant messaging application that is similar to Whatsapp. But it is considered to be far better than Whatsapp in terms of privacy and encryption. It is one of the most popular social media applications that got popular very quickly. This application was launched in the year 2013 by Pavel and Nikolai Durov who are brothers. The founders of Telegram also founded the most popular social media platform in Russia that is VK. Both of them have sold their stakes to Mail.ru and left the company to focus on Telegram. The application was first available in Russia. After that, it was shifted to Germany. They have clearly stated that privacy was their main goal for starting Telegram. The founders of Telegram want to protect the data of users at any cost. So they do not disclose the location of their offices.
They do this to avoid governmental requests for data. It said that the company is moving from country to country with 15 core members. In the year of its launch Telegram had only 100,000 users which are great for a new company. But by March of 2014, it had more than 35 million people using it. By the end of 2014 Telegram had more than 50 million users sending a billion messages every day. Currently, Telegram has more than 400 million active users. So it is without a doubt one of the largest social media platforms in the market. But what made Telegram so popular among people. What prompted them to ditch the giants in the social media world and use Telegram? Maybe you can understand this if you know about its business model.
So let’s take a look at Telegram’s business model.
Business model of Telegram
As mentioned earlier Telegram is an instant messaging application that has privacy as its primary concern. All the application focuses on is how to provide a safe platform for people to facilitate messaging. There is no such thing as a business model that generates revenue. If you know anything about Telegram then you probably know that it is for free. This cloud-based application has security and privacy as it’s selling points. Everyone knows this and it is quite evident. You can say this just by looking at the track record of Telegram. The company had to frequently shift its base from country to country. This kept happening as they would have frequent run-ins with the government of every country they set up their base in. But finally, now it has settled in Dubai.
Privacy was the reason why many people started using Telegram. When the South Korean president raised concerns on the privacy of other applications millions of people in South Korea switched to Telegram within a matter of days. The great thing about Telegram is that it did not even spend a single penny on promotion. All of its user base is generated organically. According to many sources, the company is valued anywhere between 3 to 5 billion dollars. But the founders have stated that the company will never be sold. They also stated that making a profit is not their end goal which brings us to the next topic.
How does Telegram make money?
Believe it or not, Telegram is a non-profit organization. It does not earn a single penny for offering its services. One of the founders Pavel Durov stated that they believe in a fast and secure messaging application that is also completely free. So it is quite clear that they do not earn money from this. But how do they pay the salary of their employees? They have stated that their company runs on donations. People who understand the vision of Telegram make donations to the company.
Pavel Durov has said that they have enough money with them for now. Money that is sufficient to pay the bills. But they are not certain of the future. If they run out of money they will introduce non-essential paid options. They want to do this to support the infrastructure and pay the salary of the employees. As long as they can do that they don’t care about profits which is something you don’t hear from a company that has one of the largest user bases in the world. They have also clearly stated that they are not going to monetize it by showing ads or by charging a subscription fee.
What makes Telegram different from WhatsApp and other applications?
As mentioned earlier it is a cloud-based application. That means all of its data is stored in the cloud. But what makes it a better messaging application is its multi-data center encryption and infrastructure. It allows Telegram to be more secure and faster compared to other applications like Whatsapp. So if you’re data is saved once then you will be able to access it from anywhere using any device. Not only that but you can also keep track of messages and download any file whenever you want. Telegram gives you an option to send your data or files without compressing them. You can see that images that are sent through WhatsApp are compressed. Due to this they lose their quality and you won’t be able to find little details but Telegram is the opposite of that. They do not compromise on quality.
Not only that they also allow you to send files that are large in size. You can send files that are 1.5 GB. This allows you to share videos that are recorded in 4K. It also streams the video while the video is being downloaded in the background. This helps you in previewing the video. It allows you to send all types of files irrespective of their format. There are also bots on Telegram. These are the channels that are operated by AI-powered bots rather than humans. Telegram offers you to have two types of groups as well. One is normal groups with 200 members where you can add people from your contact list. The second one is called a supergroup where you can have 100,000 members.
Conclusion
This is the business model of Telegram. It is shocking to know that this platform does not generate any revenue. They consciously took this decision to provide security and privacy to people who commendable. Telegram is offering privacy in a world where it is dying. The business model of Duckduckgo also has a similar policy but it does generate revenue. With the growing number of users, you can only hope that Telegram gets enough donations to keep offering
