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Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

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Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#31

Post by dgellow »

fullstop wrote: post #25
dgellow wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give a special logo/color/background to the premium stickers or to premium users (people paying 1€/month for example).

Premium users is likely the way to go, then. I feel like the background / logo could be emulated.

You can easily imagine a shiny border that cannot be emulated easily. In any case it doesn’t really matter if some people can copy the content. As long as enough users are willing to pay for premium stuff, that’s good. And it’s definitely the case, lot of people are happy paying for cosmetic content when it’s done well.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#32

Post by synthmeat »

baybal2 wrote: post #29
synthmeat wrote: post #16

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.

And what so? China bans half of the Internet. It's actually harder now to find a range that is not banned that one which isn't for VPNs.

No, I'm not making a statement about blocking, just using it as device to try and infer what's Telegram's infrastructure, I'd assume it's majority of their expenses.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#33

Post by fullstop »

synthmeat wrote: post #16

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.

It was AWS and Google. [1]

1. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43865538

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#34

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

fabiospampinato wrote: post #9
tw04 wrote: post #2

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".

"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.

This is part of the issue. Audience. Mass consumer does not know and/or does not care. If that is the case, the company can easily determine that Zoidberg approach of 'Why not both' is very rational, if annoying to people like me.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#35

Post by fsflover »

corobo wrote: post #30
tw04 wrote: post #2

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".

Especially when there's Telegram groups that are charging $10/mo to get into haha. Advertising and privacy don't mix. e: I was wrong, it's $20/mo (wip.co)

> Advertising and privacy don't mix.

Targeted advertising and privacy don't mix. Context-based advertising is fine for the privacy. But it may not be fine if you don't like to be manipulated.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#36

Post by helsinkiandrew »

ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #4
tw04 wrote: post #2

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 a…

I wonder if you're typical though. Many people will likely be using it along with other IM apps to communicate with colleagues/friends/family and balk at paying even marginal amounts. Perhaps an ad supported model with ad free premium, or free to receive, but pay to send over x messages a month etc.

Whatever they decide they'll likely annoy lots of their users.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#37

Post by curryst »

tw04 wrote: post #2

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 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.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#38

Post by batiudrami »

tw04 wrote: post #2

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".

The #1 thing holding people back from changing to Telegram or Signal is network effects and you want to add a paywall?

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.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#40

Post by qwerty456127 »

ComodoHacker wrote: post #23
tw04 wrote: post #2

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".

Pavel clearly has a social agenda behind Telegram. He wants to provide access to independent uncensored communication platform to everyone for free. So looks like ads is the only other option left for now.

Today ads never come without tracking. This is the problem. And even without tracking ads are a kind of garbage I don't want anyway. So, the day I get ads in Telegram I'm leaving. At the same time I wouldn't mind a reasonable (~1$/month, I don't do anything heavy, text messaging only) subscription.
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