📒 Where is Telegram actually heading? ⚫️ If you’ve been following the latest Telegram betas, you’ve p

📒 Where is Telegram actually heading?

⚫️ If you’ve been following the latest Telegram betas, you’ve probably noticed just how many new features keep showing up. In the past few weeks alone, we’ve seen a recommendation feed based on user interests, interactive widgets with Gram Wallet support, and most recently, built-in AI agents. The feature list keeps growing — but what is Telegram actually trying to build toward? What does it want the app to become?

⚫️ In the past, the logic behind Telegram’s updates was easier to follow. Take Instagram being blocked in Russia in 2022 and the wave of new users that followed — Stories were clearly built with that audience in mind. Or take Gifts: once Telegram found a hit, the next updates kept pushing in the same direction, with an in-app marketplace, redesigned profiles, crafting, and more.

⚫️ Now, though, it sometimes feels like new features are being added simply because the team can build them. Maybe widespread use of AI really has made development much faster. But how all these features fit together — and what Telegram ultimately wants to become — is much harder to understand.

⚫️ Telegram itself could probably provide a bit more context, but the last post on its official blog was published back on August 25, even though the app has received several updates since then. When macOS client developer Mike was asked why Telegram had stopped writing about new releases, he said the team is shipping so many features that it simply doesn’t have time to cover them all. It’s hard to believe Telegram’s new X account intern couldn’t find the time for that.

⚫️ Hopefully, there is some bigger plan behind all of this, and Telegram is holding back its next major announcement for a reason. Today, for example, Fragment removed mandatory KYC for buying Stars and Premium. Maybe that’s another step toward the mass rollout of Money and mass adoption of GRAM. Maybe not. For now, it still feels like Telegram itself isn’t entirely sure where it’s heading.

@thedailyton