Telegram President Pavel Durov recently shared data from the application that has increased to reach 100 million users over the last year.
In the battle for messaging services, WhatsApp is still the leader, with over 2 billion people using it. However, recent changes that have been controversial and huge service interruptions, as well as the lack of privacy safeguards, have led thousands of people to look for alternatives on the market.
One of the most popular is Telegram. Pavel Durov, its CEO, has claimed to have reached over 800 million people in the past year, a progressively increasing number, which, though far from the top brand, is an exceedingly positive figure for the app that was created in 2013.
The company continues to expand
In the words of Durov on his personal Telegram channel, 2.5 million new customers are connected to the platform each day. In the first week of this year, the threshold of 800 million was broken.
“We are extremely grateful and content, even though this enormous expansion also means more costs for storage and traffic to support our users,” says the Russian.
The increasing number of subscribers is allowing the company, after more than 10 years, to reach profitability. Durov claims he’s not made the cut yet, but he’s close.
“Luckily, Telegram is super efficient in its spending and got off to a good start with the monetization process in the last year. While it’s not yet financially profitable (which would be difficult to achieve within two years of the monetization process), Telegram is closer to achieving profitability in absolute terms than its competitors like Twitter and Snap,” it reads.
Alongside its subscription service, which offers a variety of top-quality software, Durov says that $270 million worth of bonds were sold to fund the growth of the company and also to fund its messaging service.
“I personally invested around 25% of the latest Telegram bonds and invested thousands of dollars in growing Telegram. This is on top of the millions I’ve invested in the past 10 years to keep Telegram operating. There were some who suggested I should have purchased an apartment or a plane. But I’d rather stay focused on my job without “owning” any item,” He adds.
Durov has confirmed that he invested in cryptocurrency, such as toncoin and bitcoin
“Hundreds and millions of users have signed up on Telegram because they were looking for an unaffected messaging service that puts their users’ needs first. It’s my duty and my entire life’s mission to keep offering this platform,” the founder concludes.
In the middle of the falls
Pavel Durov’s post on Telegram comes just several hours after the WhatsApp service was shut down.
More than 2.2 billion people use the Meta app worldwide. Meta App, which connects over 2.2 billion people, was hit by an interruption on Wednesday afternoon, which left people across the globe disconnected for at least one-half an hour.
The company didn’t provide the reasons for the failure, but it did provide regular updates to ensure the functioning of the service.
Telegram has been able to profit from these types of errors. The biggest one happened in 2021, when a WhatsApp policy stated that it would begin sharing information with all Meta to create customized advertisements. Many thought that WhatsApp would begin reading private messages, which sparked huge anxiety and resulted in a huge shift to other apps like Telegram and Signal itself.
