[ZoomZoomZoom]

>> a lot of Russians use Telegram because of that.

This is a big overstatement.

Telegram received an initial traction from the vk.com userbase. It has very little to do with either the functionality (except may be the channels) or an ideological stance of he creators. VK simply advertised the messenger actively at launch.

Practically all other IMs (except the earlier WhatsApp and Viber) have almost no userbase in Russia.

[ex3ndr]

Nope, initial traction came not from VK. Source: I worked at Telegram since it's launch.

[ZoomZoomZoom]

Where did it come from? Any stats? Pure interest.

By the way, how do you exactly know where the user got to know about your service, and, specifically, that this spread didn't involve VK?

[ex3ndr]

Not sure that it will be ethically correct to share some internals of the Telegram company.

Initial source was never VK and Russia. Russians is ~1% of Telegram userbase or something like this.

How? By the number signups with russian phone numbers.

[ZoomZoomZoom]

Oh, than it's just me being not clear enough. Everything I've said was only about Russian segment, because I was countering an opinion that Durov's creds played a significant role in adoption in Russia.

[traek]

Any source on "VK simply advertised the messenger actively at launch"?

As far as I've heard VK and Telegram have never had a very cozy relationship, certainly never going as far as VK actively promoting Telegram.

[codedokode]

As I remember, Telegram first didn't even have the Russian language in UI and was used mostly in developing countries in South America and Middle Asia. For example, it was very popular in Iran and was used to spread information about recent anti-government protests [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017%E2%80%9318_Iranian_protes...