Yougov’s chief executive Steve Hatch takes a closer look at the data behind the biggest stories in business.
Since Telegram boss Pavel Durov was placed under formal investigation in France last week, the messaging app has again returned to the headlines. But does all this attention speak to a service that has become an under-the-radar success in the UK – one of those apps that everyone seems to have but you? Or is Telegramming still a minority pursuit?
The app has consistently attracted headlines over the past few years – often in relation to its popularity in Russia and its moderation policies – and that may have helped drive awareness of Telegram among British consumers from just 23 per cent in the first quarter of 2021 to 49 per cent in the last full quarter of this year. That’s according to data captured by our brand-tracking tool, BrandIndex.
But opinion on Telegram is split. Our Impression metric, which tracks the proportions of people who have a negative or positive view of the brand and provides a net score, has never reached higher than two over the past 14 quarters and has only recently climbed from negative territory. This is a brand that has roughly the same proportion of admirers as sceptics.
Yet more and more people are thinking about using Telegram. Today, almost one in ten British consumers would consider using the app (nine per cent). Men are more than twice as likely as women to do so (but they are also more likely to be aware of it too).
And that gives us a clue as to whether Telegram is one of those apps that everyone but you has downloaded. Spoiler alert – it’s not. Despite its high awareness levels, according to our Profiles tool only around six per cent of the British public uses the platform. That’s slightly more than are using Skype to message. In contrast, 58 per cent are using Facebook Messenger and 81 per cent are on WhatsApp.
Telegram, then, may not yet offer the scale and reach of other platforms but it certainly has a level of consumer awareness it can build on.