Don’t know, it feels like he was (maybe still is) quite good at marketing and found a good team back in the days, but now they are just another big company trying to make a western WeChat and becoming a monopoly.
I like the product, but I am a bit wary of the founder and their strategic course
I don’t know what Telegram tries to become but given the existence of WhatsApp, it’s certainly far off of becoming a monopoly in the foreseeable future.
Well, they are trying to pull out their own cryptocurrency, they integrated a wallet into the app, added an ads marketplace, I think I heard of plans to add apps like in WeChat. Also they added stories, but everyone does that now
Plus, on every occasion of service issues with WhatsApp and other stuff they brag about how many users converted because of that.
I personally dislike WhatsApp for two reasons, one is Meta, and the second is they keep partially losing my message history and contacts every time I migrate to another device
Edit: oh, yeah, and Telegram wants business accounts to be able to use Telegram as a landing, pretty much like many do now with Facebook (this practice I find abominable, but that’s another point)
Calling Durov a visionary is, eh, ahem, meow, strange.
One funny thing about VK is, though, that it apparently started similarly to Facebook, possibly wasn’t initially a complete clone even.
But the guy is too elitist for his actual level of expertise.
One of the things Durov lost since becoming a visionary is the ability to wear a shirt.
