4️⃣0️⃣ To celebrate my 40th birthday today, we’ve added 3 new limited edition gifts — 🎂🗓 🕯

They come from one of my favorite emoji packs — BirthdayCollection 🕯

Enjoy! 🍸

🏷 Telegram has launched the most affordable way for businesses to authenticate their customers’ phone numbers — just $0.01 per code, anywhere in the world.

📥 Now businesses can save millions by sending verification codes to their users right through Telegram. This method is much cheaper, faster, and more secure than traditional SMS verification. We call it Telegram Gateway 🔗

💵 Phone number verification is a multibillion-dollar industry. Telegram alone has been spending around $10M per month to authenticate all the users who sign up and log in to our service.

🏅 We’ve made this investment so that others won’t have to. Since we’ve already verified the phone numbers of nearly a billion people, other businesses can avoid high verification costs. And if the phone number they want to verify is not connected to a Telegram account, we won’t charge at all.

🎁 Our prices are unprecedentedly low, so I’m not sure if Telegram Gateway will become a significant revenue source for us. But we hope that this initiative will make the world more efficient, reducing costs and prices for many services worldwide 🤝

My favorite eatery in Paris suggests I get some inexpensive lawyers 😄

😎 If I had to give one piece of advice to people in their 20s who want to build something great, it would be: “Never drink alcohol.” 🍸

🤮 I haven’t drunk alcohol in nearly 20 years, but I’ve seen many successful people ruin themselves with it. Alcohol clouds your mental clarity and intuition for days after consumption. While it might lift your mood temporarily, it’s like taking out a loan — you’ll pay it back with interest. The short-term pleasure brings long-term misery 😵‍💫

🍔 I know it’s hard not to yield to social pressure: humans have evolved to copy the behaviors of those around them. But the habits of the majority are self-destructive — most people around us drink alcohol, eat fast food, and have passive lifestyles. And that’s fine. If you want to achieve something extraordinary, however, you’ll boost your chances by keeping both your mind and body healthy 😼

👀 Big day today — Telegram has taken its first step toward becoming a video platform 📺

🤬 Until now, videos in channels were displayed in exactly the same format they were uploaded, often requiring users to wait and download gigabytes just to watch a short clip ☹️

▶️ With today’s update, however, Telegram servers will compress popular videos into multiple quality options and optimize them for streaming. Now, when you watch a video, Telegram automatically selects the most suitable quality based on your connection speed ⚙️

👏 As a result, watching videos on Telegram is now a far smoother experience! Our October update includes more features that redefine messaging — but I’ll let you fully focus on (spooky) videos this Halloween 🎃

💰 Ten days ago, a developer launched a mini app that has already generated $500,000 in revenue. He built it in just two days during the time off from his main job.

🖌 Without a team or marketing budget, he single-handedly implemented everything — design, concept, client-side code, and server-side code. Inspired by my own solo journey when I created VK in 2006, he tackled every element himself.

📈 Thanks to its brilliant concept and minimalist design, his mini app went viral. For the past ten days, it’s ranked in the Top 4 grossing mini apps on Telegram. This is the power of hard work, determination, and the Telegram mini app platform! #️⃣