telegraph A new subscription plan called Telegram Premium is being added.
Hints of Telegram Premium have been circulating for weeks as the company tests Beta on iOS. Telegram CEO and founder Pavel Durov confirmed the rumors this week and accepted his official channel (this is a picture if you don’t want to join) to display the new tier.
Larger files and faster speeds
Officially, the subscription plan will co-exist with the free service, adding new features (such as sending “large files”) and resources, and increasing the speed of the app. Premium members will also get priority access to these new features.
Durov clarified that no free feature will be suddenly thrown behind a paywall and look forward to new features in the future. Interactivity between premium and free users will also be enhanced. For example, free users will be able to read large files sent to them by paid members or click on premium reactions on sticky messages.
Not much can be gleaned from Durov’s statement, but there are some potential leaks.according to a telegraph leak channelthe new premium tier may include increased upload size up to 4GB, animated avatars, new chat management tools and speech-to-text conversion.
We reached out to Telegram to ask if it could confirm any of these details, and what the price point would be. Unfortunately, Telegram’s official line did not reply to us.
Analysis: Funding Needs
Monetization has been a sticking point for the company. Telegram has been a free service for the past nine years, but that has to change because, as Durov explained in his channel, Telegram needs money.
He revealed that as people asked Telegram to add more features, the company ran into sustainability issues. Durov said that if Telegram added everything people wanted, server costs would become completely “out of control” and could force it to shut down the app. The premium tier is a way for users to directly support the application.
Telegram has tried various crowdfunding methods in the past.some, like Sponsorship Information, is retained and integrated into the app’s advertising platform.Others are more like its catastrophic The billion dollar blockchain platform, TON. The SEC eventually caught wind of TON, and Durov quickly abandoned the ship and abandoned the project.
It will be interesting to see if Telegram Premium is the money-making tool the company wants. Compared to failed blockchain projects, the senior tier is more grounded.If you’re interested in encrypted messaging apps, TechRadar has one Best of 2022 list.
