This article was originally posted at Product Identity.
What comes to your mind when you hear the word Telegram?
I wouldn’t be surprised if drugs, sex, or crypto are your first associations. Throughout the years, Telegram earned a shady reputation, perhaps not strategically, but for a “good” reason.
I feel like Telegram is a mystery. On the outside, it might be perceived as a platform designed for drug traffickers, crypto scammers, and sexual abusers.
I shared this feeling when I joined the early team of Bancor in 2016, as I also joined its internal group chat, needless to say, on Telegram.
However, the app was quickly removed from my list of stigmas. Instead, I started to appreciate Telegram for its well-crafted product and care for design. From its meticulous attention to small details to have a unique brand — it stands as a dogma of an opinionated product (and a company) in many aspects. In addition, it helped me recognize the benefits of separating my private and professional lives early on.
After using Telegram extensively over the past 7+ years, I feel the urge to write about it, but this time not in the spirit of its typical news headlines.
Under the radar
For years Telegram has lived in the shadow of other messaging apps. In a matter of just one week in February 2014, two big announcements were made:
These moments have seemingly marked WhatsApp and Viber as the great winners of that time, gaining a huge financial fortune.
Seven years later, another member of the instant messaging apps family, Signal, earned a somewhat aristocratic reputation as the new beloved child of some famous tech figures.1
Although Telegram isn’t as popular as its competitors in the Western mainstream, it still serves hundreds of millions globally.
In my inner circles, Telegram is widely known but rarely utilized. I believe this reality has been perceived for several reasons:
Popularity in countries with less attractive economies
The company's unwillingness to become a TikTok-mainstream app
Extremists have made a bad impression on outsiders
Messengers like WhatsApp and iMessage have become the default for family and close friends chats. These apps were primarily designed for 1-on-1 and small group chats. Their dull interfaces might seem tedious for craftsmen, but that’s what appeals to most people.
With the rise of the smartphone, and as mobile broadband has become cheaper, it was only a matter of time before the future of SMS would become the same as the CD-ROMs. WhatsApp and iMessage have become the default for text communication, leaving the old SMS app a place for receiving spam and marketing messages.
On the contrary, Telegram has found its place in the world of work/business.
From early on, Telegram groups, called supergroups, were designed to support a huge amount of members, going all the way from 1,000 to 200,000(!!!) throughout the years. With enhanced admin moderation tools, it takes on a more classic software vibe reminiscent of mIRC or vBulletin forums, rather than a casual instant messaging app. It often seems like Telegram competes directly with community chat apps like Discord or Slack, instead of instant messaging apps as mentioned before.
Telegram channels, a hybrid newsletter-forum tool, is another way to serve the community use case. This popular feature, which has lately become available on WhatsApp, allows anyone, from traditional businesses to online creators, and other celebrities, an unmediated way to communicate with their audiences.
On a personal level, I’ve noticed when using Telegram for work purposes, it often takes the role of other apps. The ability to send large files (up to 2 GB) is ridiculously easy, which reduces the need for email, or file transfer services style WeTransfer.
As for productivity, I could use it over Slack for chatting with peers, and organizing chats into folders helps to reduce the massive noise tons of groups tend to create, which makes the overall experience calmer.
This blend of features, ranging from work to personal uses, creates Telegram an identity of a super app, and not in the X way. This unique market position often makes me sound some bizarre claims like Telegram could become the next social network or email client.
In the age of crypto
Interestingly enough, when the crypto space started to explode back in 2017, many crypto startups turned to Telegram to establish their communities, rather than Facebook groups or Slack which dominated this use case at that time.
Whether or not crypto was a catalyst that brought Telegram to the forefront of the tech industry, I think it had a big role. Telegram went out of the crypto borders and suddenly many of my contacts started appearing on my phone screen as newcomers.
Putting aside bot integrations, vast admin roles, and other community moderation features aside, I think there’s something about the directness Telegram offers.
There’s a profoundly different atmosphere, in my opinion, when chatting over Slack vs. Telegram. As Slack was built to serve teams for internal communication, it feels commercialized by its nature. Slack’s channels feature is well suited for organic teams, but when it comes to causal interactions it feels less friendly.
In contrast, Telegram was initially built as an alternative for casual, instant messaging. When you take the single chat interface into communities, it often feels like a trollbox, but ironically it creates an intimate experience in some way.
Having only one place to chat might deter introverts, but it enables situations where the CEO of a company casually replies to community members.
Built around privacy
What does it mean to design for privacy? You don’t open an app, designed in a dark-mode theme and think to yourself “Wow this feels so secure!”. Neither it’s enough to pick the “right“ color to convey the “right” feeling.
I believe privacy's essence lies in its intangibility.
You don’t see it. It doesn't wear a hat, nor does it come in a shape or color. It’s something that needs to be conveyed. In other words, it’s a feeling, an impression, that needs to be enacted in people’s minds. This is what designers and product builders often call a product value or principle — and if to put it in the startup lingo, the glorified value proposition.
Throughout the years, Telegram has been in the headlines, often tied to some controversial events. From Shiny_Flakes to the famous Russian government ban incident, Telegram has often been at the center of attention. And there’s no doubt this privacy-first approach has contributed to its public image.
Privacy has become a real concern once our digital footprints have become a thing. We’ve learned its importance the hard way, witnessing how our private data plays into the hands of the Big Tech. The companies that once seemed so innocent and ground-breaking, have turned into morally ugly monsters. It turned out that sacrificing people's data is absurdly a lucrative business. This culture has shaped an economy where most companies, big and small, won’t sacrifice the potential to see a financial upturn, even when it seems counterintuitive.
However, this naivety of the past decade has now been replaced by more mindful approaches. These days we are more conscious of the tools or services we use and pay for than ever before.
If there was a belief that privacy is a built-in component that comes with every product we use, then it surely faded away long ago.
To me, that’s why there’s something novel about centering a product around privacy. However, it raises an interesting question: if privacy isn’t the money maker, how can it sustain a business?
In the context of Telegram, attempting to answer this question requires looking at the bigger picture: Telegram is a company with a unique position. As an independent and private company, it has the luxury 99% of tech companies simply don’t have. Its wealthy founders have been financing the company right from its inception, removing the danger of being hammered by investors or board decisions.
Durov said in his post that he “personally bought” about a quarter of the new Telegram bonds, investing “tens of millions into Telegram’s growth.” Over the last 10 years, Durov said, he has spent hundreds of millions on the app to keep it operational.
Manish Singh, Telegram raises $210 million through bond sales
A side note on business models
Telegram introduced its Premium feature in 2022 as part of a more sustainable revenue stream. In a rough calculation, it needs to take more than 1.5 million customers to pay for the premium version to pay back only the “investment” Durov made. Although Telegram surpassed 800 million users, I’m curious to know what’s the conversion rate.
I also see in this business model a distinction between Telegram and other apps like WhatsApp, Meta Messenger, and iMessage. The latter derive revenue either through the corporate channel or indirectly through their parent companies' various monetization channels.
Features like end-to-end encrypted chats, disappearing messages, or self-destructing media are nice and all, but they have to be tied to a broader doctrine.
When WhatsApp (Facebook) messed up its privacy policy in 2021, people have flocked away:
Popular messaging service WhatsApp recently saw a huge group of its users jump ship for rival platforms.
The reason for the switch? An updated privacy policy.
WhatsApp recently announced a new privacy policy that no longer allows users to opt out of sharing their data with parent company Facebook. According to the new policy, user data like phone numbers, address books, pictures and the contents of some messages will now be automatically shared with Facebook. The new policy goes into effect on February 8th.
Blake Morgan, WhatsApp Controversy Shows Just How Much Privacy Matters To Customers
I doubt this decision stems from novel desires. When a company is at the mercy of the interests of a parent company or board members, maintaining an original ethos becomes challenging. Telegram remains true to its origins, despite controversies that have given it a negative image.
However, its origins become arguable in times when it takes a very particular stand.
Telegram’s strong privacy doctrine increases some moral and ethical debates. As we live perhaps at the peak (if there’s any) of fake news, revisiting the sources which we consume content from is crucial. Twitter and Meta “enjoy” the rise of this phenomenon as it’s skyrocketing traffic and engagement on their platforms. It also acts as another reflection of how our digital footprints get exploited for targeted ads and algorithmic manipulations.
The nonconformist Telegram’s agenda has been fueled digital activity of all kinds of organizations. Sometimes it’s tied to just-above-the-law activities like Telegrass but it often relates to extreme groups like terror organizations such as ISIS or Hamas.2
Telegram's novelty is overshadowed by those events, prompting the question of whether the platform leverages conflicts to boost user numbers or if it reflects a core belief of the founders. As with many things that live in the gray area, I can only assume it’s a mix of both. Nevertheless, the answer will probably remain unknown.
Still feels like a startup
Telegram is a 10-year-old company, post the so-called startup phase, but it still retains a vibrant startup vibe.
Karri Saarinen once wrote about the importance, in his opinion, of startups writing and publishing product changelogs. He gives numerous reasons why early-stage startups should embrace such an approach. He goes from getting customer feedback to investor relations, and that’s how summarizes his essay:
So write changelogs. It’s an easy and low-effort way to keep the momentum, get new users, recruit, and build investor relationships. All things that help your company to be more successful.
A year later, Brian Lovin also wrote about changelogs, this time from a personal standpoint:
If you’ve ever felt the frustration of building a personal website, only to watch it go stale, or felt like modern social networks only show a cardboard-cutout version of yourself, it might be time to make your personal changelog.
I think that sense of staleness also resonates with the startup world.
Often we witness a startup's maturity process right in front of our eyes. When a young startup emerges, it tends to be loud and courageous. It might make bold announcements, declare war on incumbents, or take some radical approaches. Then, if succeeds, a shift occurs. It feels like once a startup overcomes its labor pains, more often than not it becomes stale: social accounts become silenced, and product development seems to be stopped.
It’s a gradual process that often stems from a few reasons:
A startup grows beyond manageable resources
A startup becomes too busy with its inner world (politics, operations, etc.)
A startup sunsets after being acqui-hired
Our Incredible Journey — a catalog of startups that were acqui-hired
Therefore, publishing a product changelog is something worth dwelling on. It’s an act that reflects a company’s willingness to communicate and express itself to the outside civilization. It instills confidence that it’s still alive.
Telegram maintains a product changelog that goes all the way from its inception. It probably didn’t exist from day one, but just the resources, even if small, that were allocated to this task, reflect a sense of care and empathy towards its customers. Moreover, its official tips channel reveals how frequently the team pushes new updates and improvements.
It may seem like a simple app on the surface, but it conceals many nuggets and less-known features, that are almost invisible to the average person.
From a glance, even one who isn’t a mega-super-power-user might notice that Telegram offers a large variety of features: reaction stickers, community management, video calls, drawing tools, sharable folders, and more.
To me, that’s also an expression of a startup's DNA—the pursuit of doing things that often seem no longer suit a company size.
It’s also the same maturity process that causes startups to become tedious. Whether it’s a redesign that turns a landing page into a corporate one filled with stock imagery, or a product that becomes a gigantic maze — it all tells a story of a soul that got lost.
Despite the fact Telegram has grown into a vast product, the feeling of using it, both on mobile and desktop, feels cohesive. There’s a clear distinction between core functions and product vitamins, which isn’t an easy task.
When bots conquered the world
If I had to draw a timeline of tech hypes in recent years, it would probably look like:
2023 → AI
2017 → Crypto
2016 → Chatbots
Similar to the hype following the launch of ChatGPT last year, Facebook kickstarted the trend of the time at the 2016 F8 event when it announced its new Messenger chatbot feature.
At that time, beloved apps of the design community, like Operator and Lemonade, had already bet on the premise of chatbots as part of their core experiences. But, when a giant like Facebook announced it entered the game, it seemed like a turning point.
However, as years went by, Facebook's premise didn’t make it. Although chatbots are still around in the Facebook/Meta platform, it didn’t become what Isil Uzum envisioned with his astonishing concept:
The term “chatbot” has gone through several incarnations over the past years. I got myself cautious about using this term as many companies adopted it as a buzzword mainly for marketing reasons.
Chatbots have been at the core of Telegram since it was launched. It evolved from simple conversational interactions, and payment integrations to rich Mini Apps.
Bots have turned Telegram into a platform developers adore, and not only because of its cool name. As my developer-friend, Omry puts it:
Telgram is very approachable by defnition. To get started you don’t even need to go through the API. You just talk with the BotFather to create a bot and then you connect it to your codebase. That’s it.
The bots platform is also a key element that distinguishes Telegram from other messaging apps. Unlike the Facebook attempt, Telegram managed to build and sustain its model of chatbots. Instead of reserving the “Apple walled garden” approach, Telegram enabled an ecosystem where developers build and customize bots in various ways.
In a way, it resembles the nostalgic experience of writing, or in my case, copying some pre-made scripts into the mIRC console to greet new users who landed on my server back in the day.
Telegram might not write its LLMs (as far as I’m concerned), but it serves as a great infrastructure for running different bot backends and interfaces.
A few words on branding
One of the things I believe makes a brand strong and memorable is originality.
I like to think of a brand as the intersection between a company’s inner and outer worlds which derive from product and marketing/business.
The world wasn’t shaken up when the concept of stories, invented by Snap, was rapidly implemented by other social apps like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and even Spotify.
Stories have become a convention swiftly, much like the popular hamburger menu icon or the like button. That’s the nature of conventions, when a pattern becomes established enough, consumers expect to see it elsewhere.
So when WhatsApp announced its channels feature, no one criticized how it was “shamelessly” copied from Telegram.
I can count many other examples:
Did anybody know the bento grid before Apple took it under its wings?
Did Clubhouse really “copy'“ the new kid in town, Airchat?
What about the Linear effect?
Remember Corporate Memphis?
It’s an endless list, and I didn’t even mention Stripe.
Although a brand isn't defined by its features or interface design alone, the above examples reflect the desired sense of originality. Whether it’s a remix of old and new ideas, or inventing new concepts—there must be a “unique id” that would identify a company’s brand. A brand is measured not only by building a great product but also by building an unusual presence.
In practice, the greatest brands would have a few “unique id’s” which most commonly are a mix of an opinionated product design, illustrations language, a brand color, or a unique homepage.
It might be deceptive to wander around its homepage and find funky animated yellow ducks. The presumed dark mode design doesn’t make an appearance either. Moreover, it’s full of colorful visuals that convey playfulness, far from the perception of a company that allegedly provides a place for drug trading or confronts governments.
However, this is only the product/marketing-business side of a brand. The other side is tied to a company’s public image, which is often derived from the founder/s perspective.
The public image of founder Durov complements Telegram’s brand. His low profile on mainstream social networks, together with often controversial opinions and statements serves the mysterious feeling that surrounds Telegram.
And I think that’s part of the magic in Telegram’s brand personality. The above might sound like a contradiction, but that’s what makes a picture of a real brand.
Thanks Piotr Niklas, for reading drafts and contributing to this post.