Telegram and The Future of Mobile Messaging
Why Telegram is The Most Important Innovation in Instant Messaging
Last week, Fred Wilson asked AVC readers “Which mobile or web services inspire you?”. I was somewhat surprised byhow none of the 190 comments mentioned Telegram, the secure, open source, non-profit messaging platform that describes itself as “similar to IM apps like Whatsapp, but better in every detail”.
As an active Telegram user, I can confidently say that their claims are well founded. The app can easily compete with “giants” like Whatsapp, and its now 35 million-strong user base seems to agree. However, what’s exciting is that not only does it comes with a fully-featured API, but also introduces MTProto, a new, open protocol designed from the ground to power all kinds of mobile communication.
More than just an app, Telegram brings a true mobile messaging platform apt to power global communications.
Telegram lets you text from different devices like your desktop or browser, but this is not new. What’s interesting is that these clients are not proprietary: they were built by the community on top of the API [1], which allows different apps (Telegram-branded or not) to talk to each other. Oftentimes users find themselves locked into a certain app because it’s what their social network uses. With apps built on Telegram, switching to another wouldn’t jeopardize their ability to communicate, and their conversations and data would remain intact.
This is what’s inspiring. In a world where Telegram is the network that powers mobile messaging, developers can build better texting apps without worrying about infrastructure or the chicken-egg problem. Removing these barriers to entry will open the way for great innovation how messaging should work for both personal and business use [2].
Telegram will outlive the current mobile messaging paradigm.
Finally, what’s most appealing about Telegram as a platform is its protocol’s flexibility. Thanks to MTProto’s support for the encrypted transmission of any kind of text, media, files, and custom data, Telegram can outlive the current messaging paradigm. Ten years from now, when we’re no longer tapping away on tiny screens and are instead walking around with computers attached to our glasses, the Telegram network will still be able to power global communications.
The real challenge will be keeping the infrastructure alive. The team has enough money to cover expenses for the time being, but the only thing that can keep it alive building an ecosystem around it. Perhaps charging just enough for commercial apps built on top of Telegram would be a smart move. I believe it has the potential to be the foundation on which the future of IM is built on. We should support this new standard of openness and security in messaging by making and investing in apps built on telegram.
Footnotes
[1] Only two of the 12 published Telegram clients are official releases.
[2] I would expect apps tailored for very specific niches. For example, you could build a messaging app that integrates with a project management system, texting apps for kids, or even smart bots that can deliver complex business software through a simple texting interface (which, by the way, would have a huge impact in regions such as Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia where group texting, often via Whatsapp, is paramount to small business and team management despite being terribly inefficient). You could even build Snapchat on its entirety on top of Telegram, complete with autodestruction and actual encryption.
