In the times after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of his nation, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, used his Telegram channel to send a defiant video message from the centre of the capital, Kyiv, calling on the nation to unite and resist the Russian assault.
The WhatsApp-like messaging service, co-founded by exiled Russian billionaire brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov, has grow to be a key weapon in a digital propaganda battle that may finally increase its utilization and investor profile ahead of a possible $50bn stock market flotation next year.
Ukraine’s 44-year-old president, a former TV actor and comic who campaigned over Telegram within the run-up to his landslide victory in the 2019 presidential election, used the service to refute claims that the military had been instructed to put down arms, that an evacuation had been ordered – and to galvanise the populace by proving he wouldn’t be leaving the capital.
Telegram, which has greater than 550 million month-to-month customers globally, is already Ukraine’s hottest messaging app. The service’s much-hyped encryption and its skill to disseminate messages to teams of as much as 200,000 – the restrict on Fb-owned WhatsApp is 256 members – has seen it dubbed the “app of choice” for terrorists.
Telegram was banned in Russia in 2018 after Pavel Durov refused to provide the authorities entry to its person information. Nonetheless, the crackdown, which included blocking IP addresses, was simple to avoid, and the service continued to develop. Russia gave in and lifted the ban in mid-2020.
The app has been adopted as a number one supply of reports exterior state-controlled media, and within the Ukrainian struggle it has grow to be a 24-hour information lifeline for civilians, journalists and even the army.
It has grow to be the go-to platform for protest teams of all types, from Extinction Insurrection to anti-vaccination teams, from the US Capitol rioters to pro-democracy campaigns in states together with Russian-allied Belarus, Hong Kong and Iran.
However Telegram’s position within the dissemination of unverified data alarmed the 37-year-old Durov – who has been referred to as the Russian Mark Zuckerberg, after he based what continues to be by far the nation’s hottest social community, VKontakte (VK), in 2006.
Final weekend, he mentioned he was contemplating shuttering the service within the “international locations concerned” at some point of the battle.
“We don’t need Telegram for use as a instrument that exacerbates conflicts and incites ethnic hatred,” Durov posted on Sunday.
Hours later, he changed his mind, following mass requests from customers, who mentioned it was their solely supply of knowledge. “Double-check and don’t tackle religion the info that’s revealed in Telegram channels throughout this troublesome interval,” Durov suggested.
Jamie MacEwan, media analyst at analysis service Enders, mentioned. “That is one other instance of Telegram being linked to resistance actions. It has very a lot been a part of its repute over the previous couple of years because it has boomed. It’s related to being a secure haven.”
Durov is understood for infrequent eccentric behaviour – he as soon as threw paper aeroplanes constituted of financial institution notes out of VKontakte’s workplace home windows, inflicting fights on the street under, and he publicly offered Edward Snowden a job. He’s now on a mission to make his second tech enterprise the success story that was finally wrested from him first time round.
Throughout anti-Putin protests in 2012, Durov grew to become massively fashionable for refusing to shut down teams that have been utilizing the social media web site to organise marches. Two years later, he was on the receiving finish of a hostile investor coup that noticed VK appropriated by Mail.Ru group, headed by Russian billionaire and Putin ally Alisher Usmanov. In December, the Kremlin strengthened its grip on the corporate when Russian insurance coverage firm Sogaz, based by large Gazprom, took control of VK.
Durov sold up and left the business in addition to the nation, turning into a citizen of St Kitts & Nevis within the Caribbean, after resisting Kremlin strain to launch the info of Ukrainian protest leaders.
It’s little shock that Telegram, which he launched with brother Nikolai in 2013 and is operationally headquartered in Dubai, is constructed on safety and privateness.
The publicity-averse Durov, who has a penchant for dressing all in black however spends a lot of his vitality criticising the safety requirements of rivals, most notably world chief WhatsApp.
In recent times security experts have in turn questioned Telegram’s claims of superiority, stating that, in contrast to rivals, it doesn’t supply end-to-end encryption by default over all its messaging choices.
Moxie Marlinspike, creator of the favored Sign safe messaging app, took to Twitter final week to remind Ukrainians that Telegram shouldn’t be as encrypted as folks assume, after what he alleged was a “decade of misleading marketing and press”.
Durov’s expertise at VK left him with an aversion to bringing in exterior traders to fund Telegram. With a fortune estimated at over $17bn, he has been in a position to assist it for many of its youth with out exterior assist. However the seek for other ways to raise the funds necessary to drive growth led him into an finally disastrous foray into the world of cryptoassets.
In 2018, Durov launched into a plan to raise billions through the launch of a cryptocurrency referred to as Grams, a enterprise that sparked an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) within the US.
Pre-sales forward of the deliberate preliminary coin providing (ICO), which might have funded a proposed Telegram Open Network (TON) system of apps companies and a retailer of digital and bodily items, drew a rapturous response from an initial select group of investors, raising $1.7bn.
However two years later, Telegram shut TON down and agreed an $18.5m settlement with the SEC, which had argued that Grams bypassed US financing legal guidelines. It ordered that the cash be returned to traders.
The setback in fundraising has not slowed development, nevertheless: in early 2021, Telegram reported the largest person increase in its historical past – 25 million in 72 hours.
Durov, who’s now additionally a French citizen, credited the frenzy of latest Telegrammers to an announcement by WhatsApp clarifying its privateness coverage regarding information sharing with mum or dad Facebook. Durov added, quite grandiosely: “We could also be witnessing the biggest digital migration in human historical past.”
The WhatsApp coverage didn’t embrace sharing the content material of messages, nevertheless it spooked many customers, who defected to different platforms anyway: Telegram and Sign have been the largest beneficiaries.
“The rising downloads of Telegram is [partly] pushed by shoppers’ rising anxiousness over the ability of the largest tech firms, and by privateness considerations,” says Forrester analyst Xiaofeng Wang.
Just a few months after that person increase, Russian enterprise newspaper Vedomosti reported that unnamed sources near the corporate claimed a $50bn initial public offering was on the cards by the end of next year.
A profitable IPO would cement the rise of Telegram, which has begun to make headway on the extraordinarily troublesome proposition of earning profits from the customers of messaging companies.
Durov, who as soon as vowed Telegram would by no means carry adverts, is in search of to monetise the platform via a mix of “privacy-safe” promoting and sponsorship of channels.
“The timing of the emergence of speak of an IPO is sort of telling, coming nearly instantly after the early 2021 increase when its person potential began to blow up,” says MacEwan at Enders. “I believe the momentum they now have, the sheer weight of customers, and the very fact they’re experimenting with ‘privateness secure’ promoting make them a sexy flotation candidate.”
A Telegram spokesman confirmed that the corporate is pursuing plans for an preliminary public providing, and that some pre-IPO bonds have been offered with a five-year expiry, however cautioned that the timeline shouldn’t be sure.
“As for the IPO plans, they are going to rely on the financial scenario on the time,” he mentioned.