Telegram was one of the applications that saw the highest growth in its user base after WhatsApp announced its new “Terms of Service.”
Pavel Durov, CEO and founder of Telegram, said that within just 72 hours, the company registered a total of 25 million new users, bringing the user base to over 500 million worldwide.
Since its creation in 2013, Telegram has been proposed as a secure and private alternative. Pavel Durov took advantage of WhatsApp’s various “mistakes” to reassure users that Telegram is a more reliable option. For example, when Jeff Bezos’ phone was hacked through a WhatsApp message, among the first to talk about the risks of this application and call people to try Telegram.
However, Telegram had never before seen such a significant increase in users as it did recently, despite the founder’s struggle since the birth of Telegram to keep it safe and private.
One thing Mark Zuckerberg and Pavel Durov have in common is that they were both born in 1984 and founded a social network. While Zuckerberg hacked Harvard’s server to create Facemash.com, Durov was at St. Petersburg State University creating an online library called durov.com to share books and notes with colleagues.
Facebook saw a significant rise in the United States, and Russian Vyacheslav Mirilashvili discovered Durov’s project, so he contacted him to convince him to create a social network in Russia. This social network was founded in 2006 under the name VKontakte (VK), and by the end of 2007, it already had three million users.
Like Facebook, VK was born as a social network for students, but it didn’t take long for people in Russia to create their profiles on it.
In 2010, VK became the second-largest platform for illegal music distribution, according to data from the Recording Industry Association of America. However, Durov believed that all users should have the freedom to share files, so despite facing various lawsuits regarding this stance, he did not stop this practice.
Two years later, after an election in Russia where millions of people condemned fraud, problems started arising for VK. Many opposition groups were created, leading the Federal Security Service (FSB) to demand Durov to ban them from the social network.
By 2014, Durov was back in controversy for refusing to hand over user data to the FSB and banning pages within the social network. This stance earned Durov the public’s attention in Russia but also forced high-level investors and executives to request his departure as CEO of his private company.
In this regard, Durov mentioned that “Putin’s allies” acquired 88% of VK’s shares, so Durov sold the rest of his company and left Russia. That year, his social network reached 270 million users.
As mentioned, Telegram began its operations in 2013, a year before Durov left Russia. Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai started developing Telegram as a secure alternative to combat government pressure on internet services and Durov’s social network.
To make Telegram a secure application, Nikolai Durov created its encryption protocol known as MTProto, and they decided that Berlin would be the headquarters for Telegram, although its headquarters today are in Dubai.
While the founder never mentioned the amount of money allocated to the application, he always emphasized that he would use these savings to make Telegram free and that he would not sell the application or user data to any company or government.
Durov has been criticized by politicians who accuse Telegram of being a tool for communication among terrorists. In 2018, the FSB filed a lawsuit against Telegram for refusing to provide encryption keys for conversations between two suspects in the 2017 terrorist attack on the St. Petersburg metro.
Telegram lost the battle and was fined, however, it refused to cooperate with the FSB, resulting in the app being blocked in Russia. Nevertheless, Durov stated that he would prefer to shut down Telegram in Russia rather than violate the privacy promise made to users.
Fortunately, the ban on Telegram in Russia was lifted in 2020, as despite FSB’s attempts to block IP addresses and VPNs, they did not make the service truly inaccessible.
In December 2020, Pavel Durov announced that his savings in Telegram had run out, but this would not be a reason to sell user data. Instead, Telegram will soon have distinctive features that users and businesses can purchase, and he mentioned that public channels will contain advertisements, so even the managers of these channels will be able to earn money from this advertising program, but he confirmed that user data will never be used for targeted advertising and privacy promise will not be violated.
