The necessity of reconciliation between Telegram messenger and search engines
The last step to becoming the Telegram social network
Thematic study and proper utilization of massive content of Telegram public channels, without the use of Google and other search engines, is very complicated and almost impossible. Meanwhile, it is not fair that the contents and posts, hit millions of views, have no place on Google’s pages and be completely buried in Telegram’s channels after a short time. That’s why Telegram has got to take this problem into consideration. Certainly, at the present time, Telegram is not just a typical messenger, and on the other hand, in order to become a complete social network, it is essential for search engines to access the contents of public channels.
The authors of the article are Ms. Somayyeh Gholami and Mr. Mehran Kazeminia and it is written in Persian and English versions in January 2019.
Telegram has been launched more than five years ago and has been steadily improving the quality and increasing the number of users of this messenger. The advantage and creativity of the telegram can be explained by the simplicity of application, bots with artificial intelligence and the possibility of creating new channels. Recently, Telegram has successfully launched an ICO for the use of blockchain technology and has managed to raise more than $ 1.5 billion in private sale. This is definitely a great achievement for Telegram, and Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, in his recent interview, has announced that Telegram blockchain project is 70 percent complete.
Contrary to the success of telegrams in various fields, a key issue has been completely forgotten. Unfortunately, to date, search engines access has not been designed for any part of the telegram platform, perhaps because Telegram originally defined itself as a messenger! Usually, Messengers, Emails and private browsing are Dark social channels.
However, over the years, the creation of tens of thousands of active Telegram channels and … brought about a large platform and social network inside the telegram. For this reason, Telegram needs to provide its users with a minimum of social network tools. In this article, we will discuss it and show that certainly, the most essential and forgotten tool in Telegram is to allow search engines to access the contents of public channels.
Telegram messenger, one step for taking to be a social network
To get a clear picture of the state of the Telegram messenger, we first look at the Telegram Analytics channel. In September 2018, the total number of telegram channels registered on this site was 84,743, where there were approximately fifty thousand Persian-language channels and twenty thousand Russian-language channels. At the time of writing, more than 30 Persian-language channels have more than one million members; the number of members of six English-language channels has exceeded five hundred thousand for each channel. Meanwhile, Russian-language channels with more than 100,000 members are above 80 channels. You can find more information and the latest updated statistics at https://tgstat.ru.
In connection with Iranians amazing use of the Telegram, one of the Iranian government officials in 2017 has published an interesting statistic. According to the report, the number of contents published in the public channels of the Telegram in Persian is equal to almost all contents produced in all Persian-language websites. In other words, half of the content produced in Persian has been published in the dark part of the Internet, it means in the channels of Telegram, which none of the search engines has access to this content. Unfortunately, the search capability inside the Telegram is also very limited, and all of these contents, photos, videos, etc., which usually do not exist on any website, do not actually have the chance to be viewed again shortly thereafter.
According to this report, more than 20,000 Persian-language public channels have more than 5,000 members. Meanwhile, 88% of the contents (messages) posted on these channels is the content creation and 12% is the other channels’ content sharing. The contents (messages) on the channels have an average of 1125 views, and in total the content of the Persian language channels has grown to 1.2 trillion. The figures of this report clearly show that a major part of the Farsi speakers’ study is the contents posted in the public channels of the Telegram.
In recent years, we have seen the increasing importance and the use of messengers in comparison to social networks in the world. It’s even said that the number of messenger’s users will soon be more than half the world’s population. Perhaps for this reason, Facebook, in addition to launching its own messenger, also purchased the WhatsApp for $ 19 billion to make up a larger share of messenger’s users. An increase in the use of Telegram messenger is no exception, but it has been only part of the success of the Telegram. As you might have noticed, it should be considered that Telegram with millions of channels and very crowded groups is not merely a messenger at the moment. Massive content production, photos, charts, videos, etc. in public channels, forwarding of these assets to friends and family groups, the activities of thousands of Telegram’s bots, the matter of channels of commerce, advertising within channels and … Beside the Telegram, we see a big social network.
Many companies, manufacturing complex and service businesses have Telegram channels and sometimes they also set up telegram groups to communicate with their customers. These companies introduce their products and services in their channels, and often there is the possibility of ordering products and services on the same channels and groups as there are many small businesses don’t have websites and online stores to order. Meanwhile, ads on the most-subscribed Telegram channels are quite common. For example, some popular channels, for every 20 posts they have daily on the channel, they have 5 ads and for advertising, they will be paid directly from the advertisers. You may wonder but advertising in the Telegram has become business of millions of dollars, in the way described.
The contents of the Telegram channels are very diverse. Some of the most popular channels are music, entertainment, social and political news. The theme of some channels is social analysis, culture, history, literature, cinema, technology, and so on. blockchain communities, cryptocurrencies, and Artificial Intelligence have many channels. College instructors, university professors in different areas, poets and writers usually have their own dedicated channels and…Unfortunately, many of these mentioned channels are not supported by any website. Usually only the channels which are aware of the importance of search engines, and have the necessary facilities to create and update a website, will store a copy of their main contents on their website, but contents of most channels actually have no chance to be alive, and only channels’ subscribers use these contents at a limited time.
Even for a scientific subject like physics, finding all Telegram channels about physics is not easy at all. Many channels were not able to introduce their addresses and subjects of their contents outside of Telegram and in the web environment. That’s why search engines cannot even help to find the channel’s address. Search within the Telegram is also very limited. In the beginning, Telegram took limited measures to introduce the topic of the channels and rating them. Some websites have also taken actions to classify and list Telegram channels, but none of these actions actually has the necessary efficiency and you cannot find and know about the channel’s content without the accurate channel’s address and direct visiting.
As you can see, it’s very difficult to exploit the massive amount of public channels’ content without Google and other search engines. By continuing the existing situation, in addition to a very limited search for channels and their contents, unfortunately, a significant amount of important contents will not be reachable and visible after a short while. That’s why Telegram needs to think about this problem. Certainly, Telegram is not just a messenger, and the last step for the Telegram to become a complete social network is to let search engines to reach the contents of public channels. It’d better provide an option for doing this job quickly for public channels’ admin.
To the attention of Telegram executives
When Facebook launched its Messenger, the contents of this Messenger was placed in the dark side of the Facebook social media and it got out of reach of Google’s crawlers and other search engines. Now Telegram Messenger needs to do exactly the opposite, and expose part of the contents of its public channels to Google crawlers and the rest of the search engines. Since channels with millions of members, are considered social network but not a part of a messenger.
It’s not fair that the contents, photos, videos, etc., which are viewed by millions, have no place on Google’s pages and they are completely buried in the channels of Telegram after a short time. The weakness of Telegram’s search is obvious and is not comparable to search engines like Google.
If there is the choice for the admins of public channels of Telegram to choose between the current situation and being reachable for search engines, certainly, most of the channels chose search engines accessibility. Because their content will live longer and will always be on Google search. Certainly, this is a great achievement for the Russian, Persian and other languages. Since the volume of the valuable contents of these languages will be increasing on the web.
Besides, it can provide an opportunity for integrated advertising within the Telegram’s public channels. Telegram, like Facebook, can use the revenue of direct advertising within channels, or give this chance to Google ads, or even like the present situation, it is managed by channel’s admin only.
We‘re pleased to share with you this topic and we hope that our proposal will be executed soon. Meanwhile, we will be glad to know about your opinions.
January 14, 2019
Somayyeh Gholami
Mehran Kazeminia
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +411,714 people.
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