The number of domestic messengers and social media application users has increased significantly in the past few months and shows a rising trend, but will these communication apps attract more users than well-known international messengers.
While the answer to this question varies among experts, officials and even CEOs of domestic messengers, it is clear that one of the main reasons behind their proliferation is the filtering of popular messengers and social media platforms after the nationwide protests in the past few months.
A report published by Peivast on the same subject indicates that the users of domestic messengers and social media apps have increased considerably over the past two and a half months.
The report cites statistics released by the Information and Communications Technologies Ministry, which show Eita, Bale and Rubika had 15.2 million, 9.8 million and 35 million active monthly users until Dec. 6, 2022. Compared with the statistics announced on Feb. 20, the number of monthly users of these platforms shows a rise of 6 million, 5 million and 3 million, respectively.
In the fifth month of the fiscal 2017-18 (July 23-Aug. 22), when Telegram was the most popular messenger app among Iranian users, the Supreme Council of Cyberspace issued edicts titled “Policies and Measures to Organize Social Medias and Messengers”. These edicts were aimed at increasing the users of domestic messengers and curtailing the reach of foreign messengers.
The council mandated that foreign messengers and social medias must have representatives in Iran and allocated loans for domestic messengers to increase the quality of their services.
Foreign messengers did not introduce a representative, while the owners of domestic messengers received 50 billion rials in loans that were deemed inadequate to develop their platform.
Telegram was earlier filtered for two weeks due to the protests during Dec. 22, 2017-Jan. 20, 2018. After a few months, Iran officially and permanently banned the Telegram messenger app on April 30, 2018.
While many thought this will increase the patronage of domestic messengers, a majority of users moved to Meta’s WhatsApp and some used VPNs and proxies to bypass the filtering.
Following the protests in the previous fiscal year that ended on March 20, 2023, when WhatsApp and Instagram were highly popular among Iranians, the government decided to filter these two applications.
This time, there was no viable alternatives for Iranian users and they were forced to either use third-party software or a VPN to still be able to use the filtered services, or use domestic messengers. However, most of the VPNs also became ineffective as their servers were also filtered.
Some domestic platforms active in the field of marketing were able to attract new users before the filtering of WhatsApp and Instagram, and they have continued to thrive after the foreign apps were banned.
At present, officials and CEOs of domestic messengers do not concede that the number of users increased due to the filtering of Meta’s social apps. They claim that the development of domestic services and their useful features caused this growth.
One of the complaints that users had when Meta’s applications were filtered was that some people were using Instagram as a free online marketplace and the ban created numerous problems for them.
People active in this field believe that domestic services have good potential, but they cannot be compared with Instagram.
“Because of the filtering and such issues, people turned to domestic messengers and the growth in the number of users is continuing. I think the increasing trend will persist in the future,” Mohsen Afkar, the marketing manager of SoroushPlus, told Peivast.
“Instagram is a big social media platform. Due to the difference between Instagram as a social media and messenger app, the working model should be different. At SoroushPlus, we have tried to attract businesses as much as we can with incentives. It will take time for users to get used to the new conditions, especially in terms of their size.”
Afkar confirms that to date, domestic messengers have not been able to attract most Instagram store owners.
This is while Mehdi Anjidani, the CEO of Gap messenger, claims that businesses operating solely on Instagram are selling illicit goods.
"The trend of the domestic online marketplaces has been upward not only this year, but over the last three years,” he said.
“After filtering, this growth has accelerated. Since domestic messengers provided relatively good capacity in terms of infrastructure, they served users without any interruption or problem. Many domestic messengers are now making good money in different fields such as advertising. People are especially very satisfied with advertising platforms because of their cheapness.”
Asked about marketing on Instagram, Anjidani said, “What is called business on Instagram is a few posts and photos that a person publicizes about a business, like a shop or a company [and they were not dependent on the platform]. Most of the Instagram’s active stores, at least the ones that sell authorized products, are active on Digikala, BaSalam and other places at the same time. One does not limit oneself to Instagram. In general, the phrase ‘Instagram businesses’ has a political meaning and does not exist.”
Nevertheless, people running small businesses have faced difficulties in finding a new footing, as users weave their way across uncharted territory on domestic messenger apps.
