As the discussion around an encrypted messaging system in Twitter opens up, this is where I think the opportunity is.

Let’s talk about Telegram for a minute.

Already the most popular instant messaging platform in 10 countries; Telegram and its open source centralised encrypted messaging has slowly been gaining traction. Particularly in the web3 sphere. Which is pertinent, since the platform adopts web3 and community product design principles.

Interestingly, Twitter [through Elon] has recently released a rough new feature outlook, of which, encrypted instant messaging was a short term focus.

There is a lot they can learn and adopt from rising and existing successors, particularly since Twitter has a lot of interplay with popular community and communications platforms across the versioned web.

But why should they use Telegram as a frame of reference, instead of more established and popularised platforms like WhatsApp or Discord? Well in short, it’s because of how Telegram was built. Telegram, similar to BeReal., was built over an extended timeline, with a slower feature release rate. Essentially, Telegram focused on doing one thing really well for a few years, to the point of a strategic YoY financial loss.

Telegram launched in 2013 and spent the following years focusing on perfecting the private messaging experience. Features introduced in those pivotal few years were all oriented towards that clearly transparent goal. Secure communications. BeReal has decidedly taken a similar track, the private social media app is oriented around a single image a day — which, I actually think is my most enjoyable social app — why? Because its existence isn’t confused, or difficult to translate.

But ignore all of that.

Telegram recently started a slow expansion into more community focused systems. They introduced channels & sub rooms in a similar format to what you can find on Discord and an integration with an external platform (fragment.com), through which a user can buy, sell and auction usernames for accounts, public groups and channels.

What’s even better is that Telegram’s core functions are open-source.

So, this is where lines begin to converge. Telegram has prepared an offering that is conceptually aligned with part of what Twitter wants to be, in principle. “The everything app” (Elon’s words not mine), the centre of community experiences.

In my eyes the best move to secure Telegram’s future is an adoption and integration into an existing or developing social system. The best move for Twitter to immerse the instant messaging experience on their platform with the rest of their product and their emerging web3 principles, is to adopt or use Telegram as a basis, rather than ideating a new instant messaging feature from the ground up. Also selling usernames would be interesting, and a confident first step towards a Twitter based digital asset marketplace — they could reinvent the concept of a digital asset wallet.

Let’s jump to talking about Twitter for another minute. What it is and what is could be.

Twitter at its core is a community platform that allows for public conversation through primarily text led tweets. That is Twitter’s external facing appeal. With a better search engine (one to rival TikTok’s) and a more immersive explorative/predictive system, this side of Twitter would be extremely effective in retaining + appealing to a wider more active user base.

TL;DR

This is where I think the opportunity is. Twitter has been incrementally making entries into web3 principled product-design, primarily with their digital asset profile pictures. But now there is a unique opportunity to expand on the community aspect of the platform. By integrating the functions of Telegram, Twitter’s external facing community appeal will have an internal facing appeal, that would naturally grow to replace Discord as the home of crypto projects and digital + irl communities.

Making Twitter the one stop shop for community discovery and experience will bring it one step closer to being “the everything app”.