A side note of a post, no big announcements, and little hype in the media. Like that, Pavel Durov announced a very important novelty: Telegram hashtags will appear in global search. At a glance, it looks like a simple update, but in fact, it extends functionality of the app, turning it more and more into an information-oriented social media.
Hashtags on Telegram were introduced in 2015, two years after the birth of the app, founded by Russian brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov. Until now, they have been used to categorize content posted within groups.
If used well, hashtags could be a useful tool to improve user experience, making it easier for subscribers to find posts within the channel . Their usefulness is obvious to publishers and content creators with a high publishing frequency.
Pavel Durov’s announcement
The news regarding hashtags was announced on May 17, 2024 byPavel Durov’s Telegram channel (Du Rove’s Channel), at the end of a post in which he thanked Notcoin users for their significant support.
At the bottom, Durov posted a series of hashtags: WealthGapWidens #RichGetRicher #DisparityGrows #SubsidizeTheRich #TaxThePoor. And then, in brackets, the announcement: “later this month, tapping on such hashtags will show all public channel posts containing them.”
New opportunities for Telegram channels
Telegram’s global hashtag search now opens the door to an evolution of the app that clearly positions itself as a social media of media content. It competes with Facebook, Twitter, partly with Google News and Discover, and especially with Instagram, from which this new feature seems inspired.
Born in 2013 as a competitor to WhatsApp, Telegram immediately became one of the most used instant messaging services in Russia and Russian-speaking countries, such as Ukraine, Belarus and the former Soviet republics. It has also grown quickly in the Western world. It introduced end-to-end encryption before WhatsApp. It allows the creation of groups of up to 200,000 members (compared to 256 in Mark Zuckerberg’s app). It can also be accessed by nickname, without the obligation to use the phone number. It was among the first to integrate bots.
Recently, while Meta’s social media (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) have increased inspecting systems (and often censorship) over content, Telegram has promoted a flow of less filtered communication. The advantages are those of a more free and pluralistic information, while the disadvantages are those of the spread of fake news. All of this has led to a growth in active users also in Western countries and a greater interest from companies, now willing to invest in advertising.
Telegram is thus becoming a social media of information, spread all over the world. In 2014, Pavel Durov was fired as CEO of VKontakte, the Facebook-like social network he founded and which is now one of the most popular channels in Russia and Russian-speaking countries. Telegram could become a giant social media, very innovative and with added functions, which would bring Durov’s original vision to the world.
