Telegram will get paid features and ads with channels

Chatapp Telegram is going to add paid functions. According to the makers, it concerns functionality for companies, for example, or extras such as premium stickers. There will also be an advertising platform for advertisements in channels.

Personal conversations and group chats will remain free of advertisements and Telegram itself will also remain free, founder Pavel Durov emphasizes. On his own Telegram channel, he sets out plans to ensure revenue is generated.

All functionality that is now in Telegram will remain available for free. Durov states that there will be paid functions for companies and power users. It is not yet known what kind of features these are. Durov also says that there will be revenue models that users can also earn from. For example, sticker makers can get a share of the sales if they are sold as premium stickers.

On the ‘one-to-many-channels’, Telegram will show advertisements via its own advertising platform that will be integrated into Telegram. These channels are comparable to social media like Twitter, according to Durov. Users can create such a channel to post messages there that can be read by followers. It is not possible to respond. Administrators of such channels already place advertisements there themselves, but they look like regular messages because there is no advertising platform.

There are currently no paid features or advertisements in Telegram, while the service is approaching 500 million daily active users, according to its founder. Durov says he has so far been paying much of the cost of running the chat app out of his own pocket. He says that he does not want to sell Telegram and that he wants to continue to develop and that requires revenue models. When the paid features and ads will come to Telegram is not yet known.

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