Telegram, the unsinkable. Why is the audience of the messenger growing?

Yulia Suntsova

Most recently, Pavel Durov was hailed for blocking the Smart Voting bot. The messenger team announced on the eve of the elections that the decision was dictated by the requirements of Russian electoral legislation, and the company supports "days of silence", during which it is prohibited to conduct political campaigning. Durov said that against the background of the blocking of the Navalny application, the Smart Voting bot, which was used by millions of Russians, became the main pre-election tool of the politician's team. “ It is obvious that Paul had not previously shown such reverent attention to the“ electoral traditions ”of other states. And then he fussed, he even wrote a post, "the telegram channel" Deputy Weekdays "notes. For several days, the concept of how "corrupt" Durov was then circulated in social networks ...

It would seem that this step of the formerly democratic IT entrepreneur, initiator of the protest action in Moscow in 2019 - "For Internet Freedom" and against the blocking of Telegram by Roskomnadzor - will be followed, as they say, by a massive unsubscribe. But the paradox: the popularity of Telegram was not influenced by Pavel Durov's anti-naval actions - the audience grew and continues to grow.

Active users of the Telegram messenger are 52% of the entire audience of Runet, and 61% of users have installed it on their smartphones and devices at least, which is 11 points higher than last year's indicators, according to Deloitte 's study "Media consumption in Russia in 2021" by Deloitte. The use of the messenger has been growing over the past five years, five years ago, only 7% of users were active Telegram users.

Telegram is used least of all in the North Caucasus. This messenger is popular among young people, the core of its users is made up of people aged 14 to 29 years.

Only WhatsApp overtakes Telegram in Russia today, however, unlike Telegram, it is losing its audience: minus 2 points compared to last year.

What outlines the chalk circle around Telegram and allows it to stay out of the influence of political and media scandals, whatever the leader says?

The main factor is a high quality mark and the ability to keep up with the times, experts say.

- Recently Telegram has introduced a lot of innovations and upgrades. It has been and remains a platform for free expression in various fields. For example, the political segment of Telegram continues to be one of the main sources of exclusive content. Channels directed to the stock market are growing very rapidly. Due to the booming demand for securities, the number of such channels has grown exponentially over the past year, says Mark Sherman, managing partner at communications agency B&C.

Durov himself said that the secret of Telegram's success is consistency in its development.

The jump in popularity of Telegram was recorded in early 2021 after the change in the privacy policy of WhatsApp - then the competitor company announced that by February 8, users must provide consent to the collection of their personal data by Facebook and its "daughters", including phone numbers. This caused a flurry of criticism from the user around the world. As a result, by January 12, the number of downloads from competitors, including Telegram, had grown significantly. Telegram took the second place in the ranking of the popularity of mobile applications in the United States. The 25th of January Telegram caught up with WhatsApp in terms of traffic volume in Moscow. In 2020, according to MTS statistics, the volume of the messenger traffic increased more than 60 times.

In addition, Telegram, while remaining user-friendly in interface, is in great demand among the corporate and government segments. Today, no political or communication campaign in the country - from completely innocent to harsh corporate and competitive showdowns - is impossible to imagine without Telegram. Messenger wins over traditional media in the speed of information and content delivery, including due to the legislative environment in which traditional media exist and are limited.

Here is, perhaps, an exhaustive answer to the question - why do they go to Telegram.