Telegram News

NEWS OF THE WEEK

Updates:

- Telegram for iOS source code updated to v5.7
- Telegram for Android source code updated to v5.7.1
- Public groups got enabled for users from Vietnam and the Philippines. (Source)

Readworthy:

- Pavel Durov (the founder of Telegram) decides to consume no food at all this month.
Read his post on his channel or this article by The Independet.

- Pavel Durov plans to launch an independent news aggregator not limited by censorship.
Instant View already allows you to read the news of 6000 publications worldwide from any device, and the statistics of their views in each country allows Telegram to algorithmically calculate the most relevant content at the moment. Read more...
Source: Pavel Durov's Telegram channel in russian language

- Telegram might develop a way to split a group chat into subgroups similar to this.
There are still many open questions and design decisions to make, figuring out all the details might be worthy of a prize by @durov.

Game of the Week:
Rocket Mania (play against other subscribers at @playingfield - see the pinned message)

Durov's sovereign web - How the test version of Telegram blockchain platform works

Last week, Telegram sent investors a letter in which they told about the testing progress of the TON blockchain platform. A limited number of companies received access to it in April.

Here are conclusions about the future of Telegram's blockchain platform drawn from TON's technical documentation.

Read the article here...

This is a short summary to bring you up to date about last years developments. A detailed analysis will follow soon.

Telegram Open Network ICO

Telegram is planning to launch a blockchain platform and native cryptocurrency.

They put together an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) to fund development of a new blockchain platform, to be called the "Telegram Open Network" (TON). The offering was organised as a SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens), selling futures on tokens to be called GRAM.

In February 2018, during the first round of the ICO 2.25 billion tokens (45% of the total number of future Grams) were sold at a price about $0.5 per token. The minimum amount of investment to participate in this round was $20 million. Then the second round of token offering began.
During both placements 2.89 billion tokens were sold (58% of the total number of future Grams).

As of April 2018, Telegram had reported raising $1.7 billion through the ongoing ICO.

Only the pre-ICO rounds were conducted; the public ICO was cancelled because Telegram raised enough money in the pre-ICO rounds. The network has yet to be released.

Hello Friends!

I'm sorry for being so silent for more than a year - I will try to post more on this channel from now on, at least summaries of the latest developments from time to time - I set a marker in my calender, so this should be possible.

While I haven't been active on my channels and in my groups I followed the development of Telegram closely and was and still am excited for every new update, because (different to other apps) every Telegram update brings new great features and not just bug fixes 😉

I don't think it makes sense to write about every update in this channel - you get these informations directly from Telegram any way, but a weekly or sometimes monthly summary of the latest developments should be interesting to you.

I start the reactivation of this channel with a summary of all the new features we got in 2018:

- TDLib – Build Your Own Telegram
- Telegram X: Progress through Competition (Telegram X for iPhone has replaced the regular version by now, Telegram X for Android is still in development)
- Telegram Login for Websites
- Video Streaming
- Auto-Night Mode
- Telegram Login Widget
- Replace Media and Add Captions
- Double-Time Playback for Voice and Video Messages
- Mark as Read or Unread
- Telegram Passport (probably nobody uses this today, but will be needed for TON later this year)
- Chat Export Tool & Better Notifications
- Telegram 5.0 for iOS
- Custom Languages
- Instant View 2.0
- New Design for Android
- Polls

Telegram also reached 200 million monthly active users in 2018!

The groupchat is also connected to this channel now, you should be able to reach it with the "Discuss"-Button in the lower right corner.

Hello Friends!

I'm sorry for being so silent for almost half a year. I'll be posting more regularly again, focusing on the most important news related to Telegram in a few messages per month.

We start this year belated with a look back at last year's new features.
You want to see what has been new in the last years? Click the message this one replies to.

New features in 2017 included:

- Unsend Messages
- t.me Links
- Telegram Desktop version 1.0
- Telegram for Android Wear 2.0
- Custom Themes
- Voice Calls
- Video Quality Control
- Instant View Platform
- Instant View Themes
- Payments for Bots
- Video Messages and Telescope
- Supergroups 10,000: Admin Tools & More
- Android Pay support for Bot Payments
- CDN caching (more speed for channels)
- Disappearing Media, User Bio
- Better Replies, Favorite Stickers
- Live Locations, New Media Player, More Languages
- Albums, Saved Messages and Better Search
- Themes for iOS, Multiple Accounts

Telegram should also reach 200 million monthly active users in the next months. At the moment there are more than 500,000 users joining daily!

All the best for 2018!
❤️

Telegram Agrees to Register in Russia, but Not to Share Private Data

Russia's communications regulator had threatened to block Telegram if it did not hand over information needed to put the app on an official government list of information distributors.

Telegram had refused to comply because it feared that it would undermine the privacy of its more than 6 million Russian users.

Russia's Federal Service for Supervision Of Communications said on Wednesday that Telegram had now presented all the required data.

"Thereby Telegram started working in the legal framework of the Russian Federation," the Russian watchdog said.

Durov said later that while he was happy for Telegram to be formally registered in Russia and to supply basic information about the company, he would not do anything to violate the app users' privacy.
"We won't comply with ... laws that are incompatible with Telegram's confidentiality policy or protecting people's private lives," Durov said.

Read more on nytimes.com

Pavel Durov posted (in russian) on this matter:

"Paradoxically, blocking US-controlled WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger is not on the agenda, but blocking the neutral Telegram Messenger is actively discussed.

As soon as Telegram is blocked, the correspondence of Russian officials, their communication with friends and relatives via WhatsApp/Viber and other sensitive data will be transfered to Apple iCloud and Google Drive.

What is the point from the point of view of Russia's national security? From the side it looks like a kind of sabotage of state interests."

(translated via google translate)

Russia Threatens to Ban Telegram

Russia's communications regulator Roskomnadzor on Friday accused the Telegram messaging app of violating Russian legislation and said it could be blocked if it did not provide it with information about the company that controls Telegram.
Roskomnadzor's head, Alexander Zharov, said in a letter published on the regulator's website that time was running out for Telegram to provide the necessary information.

Read more on fortune.com

Facebook has revealed it is sharing Instagram and WhatsApp users’ data.

The company has published a blog post detailing some of the ways in which it plans to keep content related to terrorism off the site.

However, one of the tactics is likely to prove highly controversial.

Facebook says one of its current focuses is “cross-platform collaboration”, where it also collects and analyses users’ data from Instagram and WhatsApp – two extremely popular services that are owned by Facebook.

Read more on independent.co.uk

Telegram 4.0

New features:
- Video messages and Telescope
- Payments for Bots
- Instant Views for Everyone & $200K Contest
- Different styles for Instant View and Auto-Night Theme (only iOS for now)

Read the blog posts here, here and here.

This is how our readers voted for the last updates:
(maximum of 5 pts)
3.14 (Instant view, Telegraph): 4.53 pts 😀
3.15 (Pinned chats, ifttt): 4.53 pts 😀
3.16 (Unsend messages): 4.49 pts 🙂
3.17 (Themes for Android): 4.34 pts 🙂
3.18 (Voice calls): 4.69 pts 😀 (new record)

What do you think of the latest update? Vote below!