How the idea of Telegram appeared

The idea of Telegram first came to Pavel Durov in 2011 while he was leading the social network VKontakte. At some point, the IT entrepreneur realized that he wanted to launch a service that would provide complete communication privacy. Telegram was officially launched in August 2013. In the beginning, Durov personally funded the project, spending about $13 million annually.

Move to the UAE

After launching Telegram, Pavel Durov actively searched for a country to base his creation, but it was not easy to find the right option. In Europe, there was a significant lack of qualified personnel, while in the US, intelligence agencies showed unhealthy interest in the project. As a result, Durov decided to move Telegram’s headquarters to the United Arab Emirates, attracted by the low taxes and the country's neutral political stance.

Countries where Telegram is banned

Today, Telegram is banned in many countries, including China, Iran, Pakistan, Oman, and others. This is due to the messenger's refusal to remove content that these governments consider illegal. In the Russian Federation, the attempt to ban Telegram was less successful. For more than two years, the app was officially banned because the messenger refused to hand over the encryption keys to the authorities, but during that time, users continued to actively use it.

Growing popularity

Telegram’s user base is rapidly expanding and is approaching 1 billion users. In comparison, the number of active users of another social network, VKontakte, also founded by Pavel Durov, is just over 100 million. Every day, Telegram users send nearly 170 billion messages, which is 30 billion more than the same figure for WhatsApp, the world's most popular messenger.

Most expensive usernames

The most expensive username in the messenger's history was @news, which was sold for nearly $2 million. Also, in the top three are @auto, which was sold for more than $1.4 million, and @bank, valued at $1.35 million.