Telegram’s popularity is without any doubt. Recently, the messenger reached 200 million users, and the talented team behind the well-funded platform is constantly improving its unique messenger with useful features while making it clear that it’s not for sale.
However, to date it is impossible to easily find relevant channels, bots and chat groups based on ones interests and needs.
As a new user of Telegram, you have only three options:
1. A friend invites you by sending a link, or a website/ social media account directs you to its Telegram channel
2. You search inside Telegram — but you have to know what you are looking for, and to write the correct name of the channel
3. You search on Google and find some “Telegram search engine” sites. The problem with those websites is that anyone can add a channel. As a result, they are full of spam — 80% of the channels will contain viruses/ malicious links, porn, violence, pump and dump crypto groups and more. Moreover, they are missing some high-quality channels, while showing other legitimate channels that aren’t active anymore.
To our best knowledge, Telegram hasn’t addressed this short coming so far.
This decreases the incentive for the community to build channels, since they have only limited options of increasing their audience. In fact, some dubious websites sell fake members just to give the channel owner a leverage to get paid for ads in their channels.
Starting today, we are starting an experiment: does the wider Telegram community have an interest in a reviewed list of quality channels?
If the answer is yes, then please join us and if you like what you see feel free to share our group as widely as possible, including in groups and channels you might own.
We promise to
1. Not show ads in this channel
2. Not to include any channels that had bad content in the past
3. To update this list on a quarterly basis
If we reach 1,000 members and more, we will assume genuine interest in our approach and consider expanding into more services, including
1. Listing groups and bots
2. Developing listings for popular languages other than English
3. Setting up a website with the option for the community to suggest channels
(we will still review them manually)
In parallel, we welcome any competition, and in particular would like to encourage the team behind Telegram to consider launching a channel directory themselves.
They would need to ensure that volunteers verify channels suggested to avoid having the directory flooded with content from bad actors though, unless a smart bot could do the job.
To make things easier, a limit such as 100 members could be introduced — however, from our experience especially legitimate, high-quality channels grow at a much slower pace than low quality channels. This is precisely why we think that Telegram needs a better way for users to find the gems, though.
Below is an example of 10 channels we like, most of which have less than 200 members each:
1. HBR Harvard Business Review
2. Statista
8. Wired
9. Science
10. MIT Tech Review
Spread the word and stay tuned for our next quarterly update inside our channel!
World, 1st May 2018
