MOSCOW — The Telegram messaging app, one of the most popular social media platforms, will likely cross one billion active monthly users within a year as it is spreading like “forest fire”, its billionaire founder Pavel Durov said on Tuesday (April 16).
Telegram, based in Dubai, was founded by Russian-born Durov, who left Russia in 2014 after he refused to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his VK social media platform, which he sold.
“We’ll probably cross one billion monthly active users within a year now,” Durov, who fully owns Telegram, told US journalist Tucker Carlson according to a video interview posted on Carlson’s account on the X social media platform.
“Telegram is spreading like forest fire.”
Durov, who is estimated by Forbes to have a fortune of US$15.5 billion (S$21 billion), said some governments had sought to pressure him but the app, which has now 900 million active users, should remain a “neutral platform” and not a “player in geopolitics”.
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