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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

#61

Post by WanderPanda »

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".

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

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

#62

Post by EMM_386 »

tubularhells wrote: post #46
sfifs wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. WhatsApp can only potentially read your group messages since 1:1 messages are end to end encrypted. You shouldn't spread FUD

This was in the news some months ago, they have backdoors for 1:1s that they use to comply with government agency and police data requests. Do go look it up.

This is untrue.

https://signal.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp-backdoor/

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

#64

Post by neartheplain »

znpy wrote: post #59
neartheplain wrote: post #54

Didn’t WhatsApp solve this problem? Were they self-sustaining before the Facebook acquisition, or am I misremembering things?

yup, 1$/year IIRC. I'd be okay with this, as long as there's an anonymous way of paying.

Was that revenue enough to keep the lights on indefinitely? I’m having a hard time Googling this, but I recall an article circa the FB acquisition which stated that WhatsApp’s subscription fee model + efficient backend programming had already become self-sustaining. Wish I could find that article now.

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

#65

Post by justapassenger »

neartheplain wrote: post #54

Didn’t WhatsApp solve this problem? Were they self-sustaining before the Facebook acquisition, or am I misremembering things?

All we know for sure if that they had some revenue. No one knows if they were reliably self sustaining. Especially as you grow, the costs balloon.

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

#66

Post by xNeil »

maneesh wrote: post #57
ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hulu once wrote about how, by offering a higher cost plan without ads, they removed a lot of the complaints about their service I've always wondered if FB offered a similar option -- $5 or $10 a month to opt out of all adds and tracking -- if a lot of the complaints about their service would also disappear.

Some did the math - the price Facebook would need to charge every user would be $11 a month. Sorry I can't remember WHERE I read it though.

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

#67

Post by [deleted] »

perardi wrote: post #60

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 introd…

[deleted]

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

#68

Post by dukeofdoom »

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.

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

#69

Post by bildung »

captn3m0 wrote: post #50
synthmeat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram has incredible and large cryptocurrency scene. I honestly think this would fly, if they would accept cryptocurrency as payment as well.

They tried an ICO, but that went nowhere.

Yeah, the SEC filed a complaint and Telegram settled: https://www.complianceweek.com/regulatory-enforcement/telegr...

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

#70

Post by jarito »

vhiremath4 wrote: post #52

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?

Once a company starts selling ads, privacy is no longer in their interest. Even paid customers will get lumped in to monitoring and reporting to satisfy / push up ad revenues.
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