Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov has announced that his popular instant messaging application is approaching 500 million active users per month.
Telegram announces monetization of service as it nears 500 million users
Also revealed that to keep a service of this magnitude operational, a couple of plans have been initiated to monetize the service and maintain its independence, giving us an example of WhatsApp and how things can get worse when the owners of the platform prioritize benefits over user privacy.
The first plan is to introduce premium features for business and power users. While all existing features will remain free. The service will introduce some new features that are intended to meet the needs of the most demanding user base.
The second part of the plan involves the introduction of advertisements on public channels. These channels are like open mass group chats run by an individual or a group of people and allow anyone to join. Over the years, the popularity of these groups has skyrocketed, with users treating them like today’s forums or an alternative to services like Discord, so that’s where announcements from your own ad network will be displayed while eliminating the announcements that group owners may currently be manually placing by sending them as messages.
On the other hand, Telegram was updated with the following improvements:
- Voice chats
- Push to Talk Shortcuts
- Sticker contours
- Storage on the SD card in Android
- New animations in Android
- Posting messages on iOs
- Improvements in editing
- More animated emojis
