And it's sad that it doesn't. Because that's why people use Telegram.

Media hosting - we-ell, I suppose something similar to bittorrent (or just sharing encrypted files over bittorrent) would do to back such a system?

Telegram's channels are like blogs, they have reactions and comment links leading to a groupchat associated with a channel.

It's basically a social network in an instant messenger format.

Telegram is socially , in terms of finding a market niche, the smartest thing of what's happened in the Internet recently. Durov really is a good businessman.