What it is

Launched in 2013 by Russian brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, who’d previously started a Russian social network Vkontakte, Telegram is a secure messaging service.

In Russia, it has become a hugely popular messenger among young people, who not only use it for communication among themselves but also subscribe to various channels, groups and chatbots.

In a recent poll on ITMO University’s VK page, 65 percent of respondents said they use it regularly and 25 - from time to time. “I use Telegram to read books, talk to people and listen to music,” commented Anar Dadashov. “My favorite bot is @CleverJavis_bot, which I wrote myself. So far it can only send weather forecasts for a few days, but I will update it.”

How it’s making history

Along with a huge number of users, Telegram is also waves ahead in the financial circles as it prepares for an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), which at $2 billion is expected to be the biggest crypto deal to date. Since its creation, the messenger has become a hub for crypto enthusiasts, serving as a platform for token sales and ICOs.

While Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) give investors stock ownership in a company, ICOs provide tokens that their sellers promise will be useful in a new digital network, once it gets built. Virtually non-existent until last year, ICOs raised over $4 billion in 2017, according to Autonomous Next.

The new digital network Telegram is talking about is a futuristic messaging system it calls TON (Telegram Open Network) that the company says will create a “VISA/Mastercard alternative for the new decentralized economy. We believe that a whole new economy saturated with goods and services sold for cryptocurrency will be born.”

It will be built on blockchain's distributed ledger technology, and will allow app developers, publishers and content creators to earn coins — called grams — and use them to transact. Grams, which have a finite supply, will theoretically rise in value as more people use them on the network and as demand for the currency increases.

The idea is to create a new virtual world with a wide range of digital and physical goods being bought and sold, but with no controlling institution in the middle selling your data and tracking your every move across the web.

"Telegram users are really at the epicenter of the whole crypto boom," Ryan Gilbert, a partner at Propel Venture Partners, which invests in financial technology, told CNBC.

Some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture firms have signed up to invest in the project, including Benchmark, Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, but many venture capitalists usually active in the virtual currency space have stayed away, according to multiple news reports.

Will this turn into a viable online currency for ordinary people and a new global computing network remains to be seen.

How it can be useful to you

Unless you have at least a half a million dollars to invest into a cryptocurrency project, there’re still ways you can enjoy Telegram today.

The messenger helps its users read world news, learn foreign languages and latest technologies, blog and follow other people's updates, monitor health, exchange new recipes and even process photos for Instagram.

  • TED Talks - TED lectures in English

  • Dactyl - a bot that sends poems by Russian poets every morning (learn Russian and be imbued with culture!).

  • YANDEX TRANSLATOR - a bot-translator that translate the entire text, not individual words from 12 languages.

  • Programming - the bot helps to understand the basics of programming. It has a built-in directory, code examples, tag descriptions.

  • Wolfram Alpha - bot of the largest mathematical service. You can use it as a calculator, including complex tasks, and he also understands queries like "distance between Moscow and New York".

  • Chess Bot -  a bot with which you can play chess.

  • Orfobot - autocorrects words and sentences in Russian (indispensable if you write texts in Russian!)

  • Naked Science - the channel of the eponymous popular scientific site. Posts of various subjects - from "How bees make honey" and news about space research to links to scientific films and cognitive tests. (in Russian)

  • GoogleTranslate - the official Google Translator bot.

  • PronunciationBot - type in the phrase and it will send an audio link with correct pronunciation.

  • Instabot - you can download stories, photos, videos and avatars from instagram using this bot.

An easy way to explore channels by real people and by bots is to check out their groupings by topic. (https://tlgrm.ru/channels).

And of course, Telegram wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without stickers. “Backup is the new pickup” and “Science Rocks” are just some ways to add personality to you posts, courtesy of the ITMO sticker pack.   Or you can even order your own. 

ITMO.NEWS Editorial Team