I quite like Telegram, because I am apparently an old man at the age of 37, and I greatly prefer typing on my real physical keyboard, and not on my phone.
Telegram’s desktop client for Mac is great—it’s fast, it has feature parity with mobile clients, and it works. Messages get delivered and stay in sync, and I don’t need to somehow link my phone to my main machine via QR code to act as a gateway.
And if they introduced ads, with an option to pay a subscription to remove them? Here’s my…well, it’s Telegram, so here’s my cryptocurrency, I guess…but here’s my money.
I'm an early adopter for telegram, and I'd be glad to give them some money.
I signed up in 2014, basically the first or second time it hit HN, and over time, I've built out a pretty decent social network on there, and run a dozen or so specialty community chats. I'd be glad to pay them something, 25 a year or so, even if I don't get anything special from it (though, if I did want something, it'd be better access to support if I should need it), just as part of making the service sustainable.
It'd made coordination in my life so much easier, and I legitimately cannot fathom going thru the pandemic without it, it's been my social lifeline.
Mostly I love it because its a desktop has parity environment, I literally sit in front of a computer 12+ hours a day, why do I want to limit myself to a phone-only service.
I read an article that cautioned users from switching to Telegram from other apps, because "Telegram is going to introduce ads". This is misleading for at least 3 reasons:
1. There will be no ads in chats on Telegram. Users who rely on Telegram as a messaging app, not a social network, will never see ads. Private chats and group chats are and will always be ad-free. As I outlined in December, ads are being considered only in large one-to-many channels (like this one), which do not exist in any other messaging app. So users ditching older apps for Telegram won’t increase the number of ads in their lives.
2. User data will not be used to target ads. We believe that collecting private data from users to target ads the way WhatsApp-Facebook do is immoral. We like the approach of privacy-conscious services like DuckDuckGo: monetizing services without collecting information about users. So if we introduce ads in one-to-many-channels, they will be contextual – based on the topic of the channel, not targeted based on any user data.
3. We are fixing ads that are already here. In most markets, content creators on Telegram already monetize their content by selling promotional posts in their channels. This is a chaotic market with multiple third-party ad networks pushing intrusive ads that create a negative user experience. We want to fix this situation by offering a privacy-conscious alternative for channel owners.
Users will be able to opt out of ads, but I do think that privacy-conscious ads are a good way for channel owners to monetize their efforts – as an alternative to donations or subscriptions, which we are also working to offer them.
Our end goal is to establish a new class of content creators – one that is financially sustainable and free to choose the strategy that is best for their subscribers. Traditional social networks have exploited users and publishers for far too long with excessive data collection and manipulative algorithms. It’s time to change this.
Do they really need advertisers? I'm not sure why all these companies think the whatsapp route isn't possible. People are happy to pay a small yearly subscription for apps if they're truly doing something useful. While I don't personally use telegram, I'd argue it falls into the category of "useful enough to pay for".
I’ve used Telegram for years now, along with almost all my family and friends. I’m a huge fan of it, and it’s basically the only IM I use anymore (other than Signal with some tech friends).
If Telegram adds ads, rather than offer us a chance to just pay them, I’ll delete it instantly and push everyone I know to do the same.
I absolutely despise ads of any kind, and go to a decent amount of effort to block them from appearing on any device in my household. I’m totally happy to (and do) pay for useful services/content but if you don’t give me the choice of paying and just stick ads in it then it’ll disappear off my devices instantly.
Although I suspect Discord is still some way from profitability, it's monetisation strategy seems to be working well (charge subscription for premium membership with small features like custom emojis, animated profile pics, better audio quality). A surprising amount of people go for it.
Telegram has many nerdy hobby communities which could buy the cosmetics or whatever and subsidise the service for the normal users.
I use Telegram a lot and would gladly pay for it. However, that route is not so easy. People in Latin American countries can't really afford to pay for apps. If they have to choose between a free WhatsApp (who everybody uses) and a fee (which can be high in real terms for poorer countries) they will choose WhatsApp.
They can also do what companies like Steam and Netflix do, charge a differentiated fee by country. Some games which cost 20 US dollars might cost less than 2 US dollars in countries like Argentina (Steam)
A paid telegram would be crippled from large part userbase. I would not be able to convince anyone from friends and family to use it if it were paid - they can't see the value before installing.
> “A project of our size needs at least a few hundred million dollars per year to keep going”
They have 550M MAU, using a freemium model and assuming a 1% payment conversion, that's 5.5M monthly paying users. With a price ranging $1 to $10, that can be $66M ~ $660M ARR, at least they can try.
"some" people are happy to do that. Some people just don't want to pay for software regardless of anything else.
I have friends who had switched to other messaging apps instead of paying WhatsApp 1€/year or whatever it was, and by any measure I live in a rich country and paying 1€/year for my friends would have been pretty much completely irrelevant economically.
Charging for everyone will hamper network effects, chraging for poweruser features should still be fine. The should charge for the things that are actually costing them the money, like long term storage of big files
I would imagine that it's, in part, because they want to allow anonymous communication for political dissidents and the like. It's hard to make an app that is resistant to nation state level spying. It's that much harder to implement an anonymous payment system on top of that.
I know Bitcoin and the like exist, but you're vastly increasing the attack surface to identify someone.
The Whatsapp route is to get purchased by and subsidized by Facebook. There is no chance the antitrust authorities in the US and Europe will allow something like that to happen again.
While I would be happy to pay for it in principle, the value of Telegram to me is that is has provided a platform for many political dissidents - individuals and groups - who might otherwise be persecuted for their beliefs and activism, and denied a platform for learning and discussion.
I could be wrong but I believe this is a popular reason for Telegram's appeal.
How many of those would be comfortable trusting Telegram with payment details, rather than just a pseudonym?
I guess one threat in that scenario is if some other competing service actually does succeed in their ads driven model, they can attract a lot more users, because it's free? But I have no idea about running a company this size tbh, just thinking out loud.
These startup social apps that run on a loss are heavily, intensely focused on user count as a KPI.
I wonder if that leads to them balking at the reality that once you start charging money you'll lose a % of your users (which should be normal and fine!)
Telegram can also sell "premium reaction packs" (steam hats), and/or go Discord mode and have people "boost" private groups etc with "premium features"... I would actually pay for better video calls (no one is giving us 1080p or greater)
Let people pay for premium stickers. Split between Telegram and the artists. Win-win-win. Line does this well (at least it did in the past, I’m not in Asia anymore)
What about ads + paid plans with no ads? I feel like that’s a great middle ground for everyone who would delete the app if it had ads. Am I missing something with that thought process?
The problem with this model from the advertisers perspective is the people with disposable income who will pay for your ad free experience are the exact people they want to show the ads to. I don’t know if telegram has this problem, but it’s certainly the problem in most ad + premium models because if I am advertising something like a car, I want the guy who can afford $10/month for her texting app to see my ad more than the people who don’t! Those ads are the most profitable and have the best chance of subsidizing the free users, who you need in your network to keep the paid users.
(Throwaway because I work in ad tech and don’t want this sentiment linked to my employer)
Are there many here who use a Matrix client like Element? [1] Or one of the dozens of compatible chat apps? [2]
Why don't more people use it? I can't understand why people would jump from one closed source silo like WhatsApp to another closed source Silo like Telegram or Signal.
1. Signal is FOSS. Telegram is partially FOSS (the client).
2. At least on the desktop, the UX of element is pretty bad IMHO. It's slow and feels like a web browser (and it probably is something like that under the hood, I would bet). Telegram feels much nicer (but only as an instant messaging app; you can't make it look and feel like IRC for chatting, while Element can be twisted to partially resemble an IRC client). Signal is closer to where Element is at, in my experience.
I mean it makes sense if they launch an ad service for public channels. They're already filled with ads and you can't even distinguish ads from real posts. Giving these creators and advertisers a chance to have their ads placed there will be very profitable for Telegram while not raising privacy issues (the channels are a great way to distribute ads since, if you follow a Linux channel you'll likely be interested in seeing System76 ads, right?).
I switched to Telagram from Whatsapp, after the change in privacy update. I've seen a lot of my contacts switch over too.
Things I don't like:
1. Low volume during calls
2. The UI needs work.
Like for example, I click on my contact messages. To call that contact. I now have to select a ... menu item. Or once I start typing a message, the option to attach photos disappears.
I'd be more than happy to pay for Telegram service for my family and I. I'm tired of depending on ad supported software where my input as a user is out of alignment with the paying customer. Better to be both user and customer.
Which is the real rub. Paying for a product is no guarantee that your data won't be misused anyway. It's incremental money for the taking for any enterprise.
Is there a reliable way to backup Telegram conversations including media? It seems like a good idea to make some before they change the endless storage and scroll back, just in case.
Yes, in the desktop version there is an export feature since late 2018 iirc. It was done because GDPR though that's just an excuse, equivalent (in this aspect) privacy laws had existed since the 90s in most (all?) of the EU.
There is also third party software for it that has more options, the internal one is a bit limited. Some are based on tg-cli, so they're not redoing the work of implementing a client but just format the history into an archive format. I think the project that I contributed to (years ago) was called something like Telegram history formatter.
Backups of your data are always a good idea, regardless of who owns it. Triply so if the service is a bit shady (no business model, for instance). I learned that lesson the hard way with Grooveshark (which totally had a business model and did basically the same as YouTube till someone found evidence of the authors uploading copyrighted stuff themselves, but until then it seemed more stable than Telegram seems today).
I've paid for cellphone apps where the only benefit is to make them ad-free. I wonder if the problem is one of the sheer magnitude of revenue, to wit: Maybe they can capture $10/user/year on subscription fees, but the sky's the limit on how much they can get in $/user/year from advertisers.
Hmm... I'm not sure ads are compatible with their business model, because won't they only truly bring in value to Telegram if the advertisers get to use targeted ads i.e. get to know the Telegram users? ... on this privacy oriented service ...
Telegram has a major spam problem. I've got two Telegram accounts, both with the strictest privacy settings possible. One is using a US number, the other a European number. Both have the number set to private. Somehow, spammers, bots, etc are finding me on Telegram and sending me unsolicited messages 2+ times per day. All the stereotypical spam topics, plus occasional disturbing porn. These messages aren't filtered into a different inbox or even silent notifications. I'm on the verge of deleting both of my Telegram accounts over this.
If I remember well, they used DigitalOcean as provider? Was it just for frontend servers? When Russia banned it, they just blanked banned (almost) all of the DO's range.
[+] [-] perardi|5 years ago|reply
Telegram’s desktop client for Mac is great—it’s fast, it has feature parity with mobile clients, and it works. Messages get delivered and stay in sync, and I don’t need to somehow link my phone to my main machine via QR code to act as a gateway.
And if they introduced ads, with an option to pay a subscription to remove them? Here’s my…well, it’s Telegram, so here’s my cryptocurrency, I guess…but here’s my money.
[+] [-] Aloha|5 years ago|reply
I signed up in 2014, basically the first or second time it hit HN, and over time, I've built out a pretty decent social network on there, and run a dozen or so specialty community chats. I'd be glad to pay them something, 25 a year or so, even if I don't get anything special from it (though, if I did want something, it'd be better access to support if I should need it), just as part of making the service sustainable.
It'd made coordination in my life so much easier, and I legitimately cannot fathom going thru the pandemic without it, it's been my social lifeline.
Mostly I love it because its a desktop has parity environment, I literally sit in front of a computer 12+ hours a day, why do I want to limit myself to a phone-only service.
[+] [-] josu|5 years ago|reply
Why users shouldn’t worry about ads on Telegram
I read an article that cautioned users from switching to Telegram from other apps, because "Telegram is going to introduce ads". This is misleading for at least 3 reasons:
1. There will be no ads in chats on Telegram. Users who rely on Telegram as a messaging app, not a social network, will never see ads. Private chats and group chats are and will always be ad-free. As I outlined in December, ads are being considered only in large one-to-many channels (like this one), which do not exist in any other messaging app. So users ditching older apps for Telegram won’t increase the number of ads in their lives.
2. User data will not be used to target ads. We believe that collecting private data from users to target ads the way WhatsApp-Facebook do is immoral. We like the approach of privacy-conscious services like DuckDuckGo: monetizing services without collecting information about users. So if we introduce ads in one-to-many-channels, they will be contextual – based on the topic of the channel, not targeted based on any user data.
3. We are fixing ads that are already here. In most markets, content creators on Telegram already monetize their content by selling promotional posts in their channels. This is a chaotic market with multiple third-party ad networks pushing intrusive ads that create a negative user experience. We want to fix this situation by offering a privacy-conscious alternative for channel owners.
Users will be able to opt out of ads, but I do think that privacy-conscious ads are a good way for channel owners to monetize their efforts – as an alternative to donations or subscriptions, which we are also working to offer them.
Our end goal is to establish a new class of content creators – one that is financially sustainable and free to choose the strategy that is best for their subscribers. Traditional social networks have exploited users and publishers for far too long with excessive data collection and manipulative algorithms. It’s time to change this.
https://t.me/PavelDurovs/107
[+] [-] tw04|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ObsoleteNerd|5 years ago|reply
If Telegram adds ads, rather than offer us a chance to just pay them, I’ll delete it instantly and push everyone I know to do the same.
I absolutely despise ads of any kind, and go to a decent amount of effort to block them from appearing on any device in my household. I’m totally happy to (and do) pay for useful services/content but if you don’t give me the choice of paying and just stick ads in it then it’ll disappear off my devices instantly.
[+] [-] rozab|5 years ago|reply
Telegram has many nerdy hobby communities which could buy the cosmetics or whatever and subsidise the service for the normal users.
[+] [-] cyrksoft|5 years ago|reply
They can also do what companies like Steam and Netflix do, charge a differentiated fee by country. Some games which cost 20 US dollars might cost less than 2 US dollars in countries like Argentina (Steam)
[+] [-] szszrk|5 years ago|reply
Without them I would not pay for it as well.
[+] [-] mromanuk|5 years ago|reply
They have 550M MAU, using a freemium model and assuming a 1% payment conversion, that's 5.5M monthly paying users. With a price ranging $1 to $10, that can be $66M ~ $660M ARR, at least they can try.
[+] [-] fabiospampinato|5 years ago|reply
I have friends who had switched to other messaging apps instead of paying WhatsApp 1€/year or whatever it was, and by any measure I live in a rich country and paying 1€/year for my friends would have been pretty much completely irrelevant economically.
[+] [-] WanderPanda|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corobo|5 years ago|reply
Advertising and privacy don't mix.
e: I was wrong, it's $20/mo (wip.co)
[+] [-] curryst|5 years ago|reply
I know Bitcoin and the like exist, but you're vastly increasing the attack surface to identify someone.
[+] [-] ComodoHacker|5 years ago|reply
So looks like ads is the only other option left for now.
[+] [-] hardtke|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Huwyt_Nashi031|5 years ago|reply
I could be wrong but I believe this is a popular reason for Telegram's appeal.
How many of those would be comfortable trusting Telegram with payment details, rather than just a pseudonym?
[+] [-] thatguyagain|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|5 years ago|reply
I wonder if that leads to them balking at the reality that once you start charging money you'll lose a % of your users (which should be normal and fine!)
[+] [-] ZephyrBlu|5 years ago|reply
In the case of something ubiquitous like a messaging app, I think ads scale better than subscriptions.
[+] [-] freewilly1040|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] batiudrami|5 years ago|reply
I would pay for a good messaging app, but most people wouldn't, and a messaging app most people don't use is a bad messaging app.
[+] [-] user-the-name|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tubularhells|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newscracker|5 years ago|reply
- ads will be only on very large public channels and not on all public channels
- there won’t be any ads in chats
- the ads will be contextual, and not based on tracking or profiling users and their activity
- users will be able to opt out of ads
Other monetization options like donations and subscriptions are also in the works.
His channel is at https://t.me/durov
Personally, I wouldn’t mind paying a modest fee for this service.
[+] [-] brodock|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] risyachka|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dgellow|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fullstop|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vhiremath4|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrwaway-adtech|5 years ago|reply
(Throwaway because I work in ad tech and don’t want this sentiment linked to my employer)
[+] [-] csmattryder|5 years ago|reply
I pay 12EUR/yr for email, it's ad-free and works. Happy to do the same arrangement for a IM service.
[+] [-] jakecopp|5 years ago|reply
Why don't more people use it? I can't understand why people would jump from one closed source silo like WhatsApp to another closed source Silo like Telegram or Signal.
The UX of Element is terrific now.
[1]: https://element.io/ [2]: https://matrix.org/clients/
[+] [-] einpoklum|5 years ago|reply
2. At least on the desktop, the UX of element is pretty bad IMHO. It's slow and feels like a web browser (and it probably is something like that under the hood, I would bet). Telegram feels much nicer (but only as an instant messaging app; you can't make it look and feel like IRC for chatting, while Element can be twisted to partially resemble an IRC client). Signal is closer to where Element is at, in my experience.
[+] [-] traveler01|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dukeofdoom|5 years ago|reply
1. Low volume during calls
2. The UI needs work.
Like for example, I click on my contact messages. To call that contact. I now have to select a ... menu item. Or once I start typing a message, the option to attach photos disappears.
[+] [-] indymike|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smachiz|5 years ago|reply
Which is the real rub. Paying for a product is no guarantee that your data won't be misused anyway. It's incremental money for the taking for any enterprise.
[+] [-] mosselman|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newscracker|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aachen|5 years ago|reply
There is also third party software for it that has more options, the internal one is a bit limited. Some are based on tg-cli, so they're not redoing the work of implementing a client but just format the history into an archive format. I think the project that I contributed to (years ago) was called something like Telegram history formatter.
Backups of your data are always a good idea, regardless of who owns it. Triply so if the service is a bit shady (no business model, for instance). I learned that lesson the hard way with Grooveshark (which totally had a business model and did basically the same as YouTube till someone found evidence of the authors uploading copyrighted stuff themselves, but until then it seemed more stable than Telegram seems today).
[+] [-] fsflover|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] analog31|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eejjjj82|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 7v3x3n3sem9vv|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jug|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yosito|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fabiandesimone|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] synthmeat|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fullstop|5 years ago|reply
1. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43865538
[+] [-] baybal2|5 years ago|reply