Telegram eyes IPO as user numbers close in on 1 billion
- Reference: 1710249611
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/03/12/telegram_eyes_ipo_as_user/
- Source link:
Speaking to the UK's [1]Financial Times , Telegram boss Pavel Durov expressed hope the company might become profitable in 2024 or 2025, meaning listing its shares would be a distinct possibility in the near future.
The company passed 700 million users in 2022 and [2]added a paid tier dubbed "Premium." In 2021, the company launched [3]Sponsored Messages , which it described as "minimalist, privacy-conscious advertisements that can appear in certain public channels."
UK may demand tech world tell it about upcoming security features [4]READ MORE
Despite the addition of the money-making extras, Telegram's user count has continued to grow. According to Durov, it now stands at 900 million users. If that growth is sustained, a figure of 1 billion before the end of 2024 is possible.
According to Durov, potential investors have offered the company valuations in the order of $30 billion, although it is currently considering a possible IPO.
[5]
The CEO said: "The main reason why we started to monetise is because we wanted to remain independent.
[6]
[7]
"Generally speaking, we see value in [an IPO] as a means to democratise access to Telegram's value."
Telegram Messenger is just over ten years old, with the initial release in 2013. [8]According to the company: "Everything sent on Telegram is securely encrypted" and researchers can check out how the company has implemented its security by poking around its source code.
[9]Possible China link to Change Healthcare ransomware attack
[10]German defense chat overheard by Russian eavesdroppers on Cisco's WebEx
[11]Underwater cables in Red Sea damaged months after Houthis 'threatened' to do just that
[12]Nevada sues to deny kids access to Meta's Messenger encryption
It also claims to collect no data about its users and requires only a telephone number to sign up.
However, the secure and private nature of the platform has also made it a favorite of criminals and a potential target for regulations, such as the UK's Online Safety Bill, where authorities could potentially demand access to end-to-end encrypted communications.
[13]
It is also worth noting that end-to-end encryption for messages is not the default. While Telegram uses encryption, customers must use secret chats to ensure that no trace of their messaging is left behind and that their communications are not part of the Telegram cloud service.
Matthew Hodgson, CEO of Element and co-founder of Matrix, opined: "It's relatively easy for Telegram to build a product for 900 million users given it’s not encrypted by default, or decentralised, and as a result is generally jumping from the frying pan into the fire."
To put things in perspective, WhatsApp has approximately 2 billion monthly active users, [14]according to Statista . However, [15]changes to WhatsApp's privacy policy resulted in a surge of interest in other messaging platforms, including Telegram.
[16]
Durov did not commit to a firm timeline for an IPO, although a US listing seems likely. According to the FT, Durov said that Telegram had "studied several options." ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/8d6ceb0d-4cdb-4165-bdfa-4b95b3e07b2a
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/20/telegram_premium/
[3] https://promote.telegram.org/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/07/ukgov_wants_prior_notice_of/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZfCKKxEIf6kVi0iAxoPMigAAAA4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZfCKKxEIf6kVi0iAxoPMigAAAA4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZfCKKxEIf6kVi0iAxoPMigAAAA4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://telegram.org/press#security
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/07/china_link_change_healthcare_ransomware/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/04/germany_confirms_russia_leak_genuine/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/27/red_sea_cables_houthi/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/26/nevada_meta_encryption/
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZfCKKxEIf6kVi0iAxoPMigAAAA4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.statista.com/topics/2018/whatsapp/#topicOverview
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/11/whatsapp_app_crackdown/
[16] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZfCKKxEIf6kVi0iAxoPMigAAAA4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: It's all downhill once the bankers turn up
How exactly does Telegram fund its operations, never mind turn a profit?
I assume by selling data out of both ends of its end-to-end encrypted app
Re: It's all downhill once the bankers turn up
"How exactly does Telegram fund its operations, never mind turn a profit?"
The article mentions premium user subscriptions and some sort of limited ads that are channel-only. You can be sure once the bankers turn up there will be a push to find ways to profit. However they should be pretty aware that their popularity really took off with WhatsApp privacy invasions, they will (or should be) well aware that any privacy abuses will see punters flood away even faster than they left WhatsApp (because the privacy-unconscious would have stayed with WhatsApp)
Re: It's all downhill once the bankers turn up
For most of the time Durov was happy to pay for development and hosting out of his own pocket. It wasn't until the number of users spiked that hosting started getting, ahem, "webspensive", and he started looking for ways to cover some of the costs.
Telegram has two things that make it really attractive for many users outside the mainstream: it's very hard to block; and it scales really well. This is why it's so popular in Russia and Ukraine. There is also very little censorship, which can have positives and negatives, but groups generally manage to administer things pretty well. The API is also very interesting for developers, in fact, it's what other services might have looked like if they weren't interesting mainly in monetising their users. It's based in the UAE which keeps it out of the arms of many governments, but we'd be naive to think the UAE is magnificently impartial: it isn't and happy to fund freedom fighters / terrorists.
An IPO could be the deathknell for the system if it then becomes all about making money but the capital could also be used to guarantee costs.
Re: It's all downhill once the bankers turn up
I seem to recall someone here defining the term as a wunch of bankers.
Re: It's all downhill once the bankers turn up
Enshittification of the platform
I hate the little animated doo-das...
But botfather is the nads (except for the name) and much simpler to code against than WhatsApp.
1 Billion? 1 in 8 of the world's population including infants? Is that credible? If not either there are a lot of people with more than one account or a lot of bots.
Encryption? yeah we’ve heard of it. I heard it called
Encryption by policy in an article I read a few weeks ago. Not encryption via protocol.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2024/02/02/apple-iphone-google-pixel-and-samsung-galaxy-telegram-app-warning/amp/
I’ll stick with Signal where you can now use a handle instead of your phone number too!
Turning a profit?
Ah well... that is something that Troth Social will ever do. Anyone who invests in that SPAC will take a huge haircut if old donny gets
his way.
Their proposed float will apparently make Trump a cool $3B [1] provided he can get over another lawsuit from the people he's trying to stiff merely because they ain't family but came up with the idea of the site.
That would allow him to pay the New York State fraud verdict and then have enough in the legal fund kitty to pay his lawyers for all the other cases that are piling up.
Donald J Trump will go down in history as the most litigious person in US history and also the one who lost the majority of cases that he filed and almost all those filed against him.
It's all downhill once the bankers turn up
Minimal advertising? Privacy respecting? Nope, screw everything in the quest for shareholder profits...