Pavel Durov of Telegram: WhatsApp Sucks

hello hello my name is Mike butcher I'm editor at large TechCrunch based out of London and a plain Pavel Durov you created telegram after the creating V contact to the effectively the Facebook of Russia but now you've gone on to create telegram which is to some extent reminds merely of whatsapp really and yet not the same scale you've got about 60 over 60 million users what are you sending about five billion messages a day actually we're announced ten last month 10 billion messages delivered daily yeah it's right now it's I checked earlier today it's over 12 12 billion messages delivered daily amazing so that's breaking news as of today yeah 12 billion messages a day from telegram but you know I think a lot of people would like to ask you what is the point of telegram when in a world where there is so many other messaging platforms it's a good question but you know to put it simply it doesn't matter how many other messaging apps are out there if all of them suck right so which ones suck for you for me and for most of my team whatsapp suck most we actually started as a whatsapp sucks absolutely and I can I can elaborate on that plays day sure well look we're living in 2015 we're supposed to have flying cars and everything right now jetpacks absolutely but if you have whatsapp on your phone and your battery's low and your phone goes dead suddenly you can't get access to your messages it's over it's not gross device it doesn't have seen cross-device ink it's you can't send documents of big media there are lots of limitations within group chats in your communication and it's it's not private so I'm not sure I was a big fan of whatsapp about three or two years ago and I'm not sure I am now you said you mentioned privacy now you've made a big claim about telegram being having the ability to be end-to-end encrypted sure I mean that's obviously a laudable claim especially we're living in a kind of post Snowden world but what does it do for the business instead in a sense what is it where's the business proposition in encryption well look I had a friend back then when I was living in Russia I had a friend and she told me that she was presented with it with the printout of her whatsapp messages in the police department so they basically intercepted and decrypted her messages and she told me they tried to use it that to blackmail her so privacy is not something that is relevant only to business users but business is most affected because they could be blackmailed which people could be blackmailed and their their information is more valuable it could be compromised so in other words you're saying you're retaining users because they trust you because the messages can't be intercepted that's what just one of the things that makes telegram different there are there are many more and you you're gradually rolling out a bot platform it you want to describe that to us and why why that might actually end up becoming a significant part of what telegram is yeah we watch the blog bot platform I think this is the third party developers yeah yeah June this year so any third party developer using very simple API scan create a bot a suit a user that you could communicate with on telegram but on the other and the communication there is the machine that is dealing with all the messages on on that side and actually a lot of services have appeared using that paradigm of communication dating education productivity lots of stuff and I learned only yesterday that one of the most successful bought bots of the platform got an acquisition attempt eight digit acquisition at them it's only like three months old already eight digital position at time so you're saying that wasn't someone to require one of the Box yes the company that created this box so in other words so you're saying that there we startups launched on telegrams platform that might actually end up being quad in their own right that's true that that's what what has been happening and and I think the news will break out later this fall so in certain sense the bot platform is almost like apps for the telegram that's true and you think that eventually third-party developers may actually make money out there in this way absolutely so we are thinking about launching a payment API so that all the bots developers third-party developers could accept money easily from their users in telegram and yeah is it something you also might extend in terms of advertising and advertising that the the bots themselves might become marketing channels for for brands that's already happening actually it's some of the boats are being used for sending ads unfortunately I'm not a big fan of ads but these are third-party BOTS and users opt opted in receiving messages from these bots so it's already happening I hear there's there's a bot at third party both agency ad agency dealing with this really so that might become a real sort of an ecosystem effectively that you're developing absolutely that's really early-stage it's only three months old but what we're seeing we're very happy about it one of the things though is that you've clearly made some compromises on the platform because for instance there's been reports that you've you've met with Iranian government to allow the fact that you've shutting down some porn box for instance on telegram inside around is that can you confirm that for us or not well I can confirm the for the first part but I do confirm that we do blog porn bots in markets where porn is prohibited because what happens in that environment is that porn websites which are blocked started to reappear in form of bots on telegram platform and as a result which is happening in Iran this was happening in Iran Iraq Saudi Arabia some countries like that and what we saw is that as a result we got a lot of users we didn't want to and we have big poor we need we're not big fans of porn we don't want telegram to be perceived as a source of porn and so we do block this kind of stuff so that in the sense that you you make a big play about being having being a libertarian and have freedom of speech and yeah and then the other side you're you're cutting off access to some at some level is there any any sort of secret behind the scenes negotiations with some of these governments no so we we do it purely for business with decisions we don't want to in some markets we don't want to be perceived as something that has to do with the book with porn and this is actually the same reasoning behind Apple's decision to block foreign content on App Store or instagrams decision to block porn or Facebook or YouTube or Google you can you can go on and we think this is the right thing to do but if we speak about privacy and freedom of speech we have very adamant principles about it through over two years of our existence we haven't disclosed a single byte of data to third parties including governments and it was not easy and as for freedom of speech like I said if there's a but that has to do with criticizing governments or with some opposition activity we would never block such such a part even if obviously famously created the contact in Russia which was gonna let the type Facebook of Russia but you were controversially effectively told to get out of of that by forces aligned with with the government is that that's the case right that's roughly true roughly true yes which part is true and which isn't well mostly in the sense that there's a it's true and it's rough but yeah we found ourselves I mean there was some incredible stories around that time wasn't there that you were that you were effectively framed for a car accident that you were under political pressure but that's not nothing out of the ordinary in Russia believe me it's if you if you get get to the country leave there sometimes you get used to it it happens with other business manage its I'm not no different from from the rest of them and these now you've now become a resident of some kits you you roam the world dressed in black you live a nomadic digital lifestyle how do you manage how are you going to manage to continue to run a company in this way moving around the planet trying to evade authorities do you feel do you feel like you're a target and not so much no although sometimes I feel excessive attention for example here in the United States when I go and go out of the country but well it's a good question because right now we're a very small team we can afford to rent houses short term all over the world we spend this summer in Finland it was great spring in Paris just rented a house in Finland yeah and got your team together and built carried on building telegram that was great absolutely great well of course some of the guys they they stay at the home we outsource some of the design and customer support to Eastern Europe and southern Europe but other than that we're a small team of 15 and we like to travel and we want to use this opportunity to see more you you haven't raised money for telegram heavy knock you took reportedly 300 million dollars from the sale from your sale of your share in the contactor is that correct I can't confirm the exact number but I was very lucky to higher than 300 million dollars or lower I would say this I was very lucky to get out at the point before the market crashed it was just before the Ukranian events broke out and it was extremely fortunate that would have affected the value of the contact yeah because I do it before that and then after these events broke out and the local currency went down and right now the value of the company I sold is probably like three or four times lower than that it used to be so Facebook eventually will just take over in Russia I'm not sure about Facebook I'm not a big believer in Facebook Vkontakte still leads in Russia with with a huge margin but they are struggling to remain relevant because these mobile apps started to attract users I mean Instagram whatsapp fiber snapchat apps like that do you think it's ever likely it would take outside investment for telegram I mean you live this on a nomadic lifestyle any board meeting you have had with an outside investor might you know might be a shambles because you can't you're like you move around the planet all the time no we really like to be independent at this point we think there's more than market shares and revenue streams we we like the opportunity to I mean do you have do you have enough money to last for a while yeah definitely and you can just continue to build out the platform as you see it yeah we'll continue to do what we think is right um what about I mean do you think in a way is this sort of your revenge on Putin the secure messaging I'm not sure I mean I'm not focused on revenge too much it's ironic that a lot of people including high-profile people in Russia use telegram and I'm happy about that but Russia is like number seven market for us in terms of its size within the telegram ecosystem and it's not particularly important for us whether for example we're big in Russia or we're small in Russia were blocked in Russia because we've already been there we've already and made a company which owned Russian market and that's not a new challenge you have to go back to Russia can you get can you go back to Russia I can I wasn't rush of this spring for my mom's birthday and well I can go in and out of the country nobody seems to care these days because obviously they have other things to be worried about but so you're not so high-profile that I know not anymore because i salted the the largest social network in russia they shouldn't be worried about me at this point but i try to spend as few time as i can as little time as I can in Russia just because I want to see other places you like to travel does it concern you that Isis is using telegram little does that concern you that's a good question do you sleep well at night 9 terrorists use your platform you know that's a very good question but I think that privacy ultimately and our rightful privacy is more important than our fear of bad things happening like terrorism and if you look at Isis yes there's a war going on in the Middle East it's it's a series of tragic events but ultimately the ISIS will always find a way to communicate within themselves and if any means of communication turns out to be not secure for them they will switch to another one and so I don't think we are actually taking part in this activities I don't think we should be guilty or feel guilty about it I still think we're doing the right with the right thing protecting our users privacy you think that if they weren't using telegram they'll be using something else absolutely and if even with that there's open-source apps that you could build the using enter an encryption you could install them and you know it's all available so the technology is already there and it's up to us how we should how we would use it I'm kick the messaging platform kick has raised fifty million dollars from from ten cents in order to build out more of an Asian style of messaging platform where you can order a car or you can purchase goods you can you know order pizza on on ten cents or something like that is that that kind of where you want to go with telegram that it becomes not a messaging platform not just for messaging but also for other services as well yes and no because in order to go this Eastern model you have to really have high penetration into a market you have to be socially relevant for everybody and it's not always the case with apps like telegram or Kuechly dimension because although we are pretty big in some of the markets and I think we're number one in a couple of them we don't have the dominance that we chad has in china or line in japan or cacao in korea and so yes we'll we'll experiment with the payment system with bars and third-party applications built on top of telegram but we don't see ourselves as necessarily as going that way in the near future isn't there the danger that you kind of become an also-ran that you that company that sure it's useful people can you know use it for messaging but there's not very much more to it than that you know the interesting thing that we noticed is that people who installed telegram in massive numbers last year and this year and Seoul just as a backup application started to use telegram as the primary messaging application and that's why we see this huge increase in in user activity we used to have 1 billion messages delivered daily in February now we're over 12 and that's an indicator that people really love telegram and switch more and more of their activities there and more often than not they start their day from their messaging app and if their messaging app turns out to be telegram they will start at it from telegram and I think that we should be really happy about this messaging is probably the biggest thing going on in social media in this decade and we're definitely in the right place and time diverts it over 60 million users when you know what are the next big points that you want to get to 100 million when will you bid 100 million oh we are gradually getting there but you know something that is a bit discouraging about getting 60 or 100 million active users is that you always get compared in the media we with the older messaging apps there any media covering telegram stats would say look okay they have 60 70 100 million but this is still a far cry compared to what saps eight or nine hundred million and they don't take into account that we were actually two years old and whatsapp is also six over six years old if you start comparing telegram with other companies that appeared two years ago these are pretty huge numbers right so we're not big fans of announcing numbers at this point well we look will look with interest on your next next moment of announcements and thank you very much Pavel Durov thank you Mikey yes all righty

Channel: TechCrunch

Views: 879,864

Keywords: butcher, durov, isis, mike, panel, pavel, telegram

Id: kVZN9QbtFgs

Length: 20min 8sec (1208 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 24 2015