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?
There will be no ads in the sense you're suggesting.
Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
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Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#112I would absolutely love to advertise there. Facebook, google, youtube, telegram all have cryptocurrency advertising banned... Which is rather disgusting, seeing as it's the highest appreciating asset class in the history of mankind.
> highest appreciating asset class in the history of mankind.
This kind of value proposition is exactly why crypto ads aren't permitted on many ad platforms. There are too many fly by night operators selling snake oil to the desperate and the greedy. Why would an advertiser assume liability for that?
Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Exactly. FB would never do this, and google would never do it for search. It's adverse selection. Spotify is a good example. The ad supported version has uses: it's a funnel for paid users, a deterrent to competition, a data farm, etc. Making money is not one of those uses. I suspect that this is because the best advertisers audience subscribes. Also, opt out ads also harms your upside. EG, fb make more in ad revenue…
I think Spotify makes their ads purposely annoying to use it as funnel for paid plans. I have the feeling the ads got worse over time so stopped using the app.
I normally don't mind listening to the news and commercial breaks on the good old radio.
Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#114Earlier 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.
Facebook does offer a paid option for “companies”, called Workplace. IIRC, it costs $3 per active user per month. I don’t know about feature parity with the surveillance based facebook.com. Of course, Workplace cannot be used with random people that one may interact with across different spheres of life.
Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Why would you think someone who actively pays to not be served ads would be a good fit to be advertised to? Eg. My personal experience with buying products (food, software, SaaS, etc) based on ads conditioned me to actively distrust products that are heavily advertised compared to stuff that's just mentioned in reddit threads or used by friends. Would I be a good fit for ads?
I think I took an advertising class long time ago (so long ago that I don't remember if it was an actual advertising class, Advertising 101 or some marketing class). But, what stuck to me was, that most people said that they were unaffected by ads, and the data showed otherwise. Ads also help with brand recognition etc. Typically, people are very familiar with some space, say desktop CPUs... and they'll say, "I'll never buy an intel CPU just based on an ad", and that might be true. However, when it comes to a space that's completely far away from their day to day expertise, say... weedkiller in the garden, and they're more likely to trust a branded product that they've seen product placement or other types of ad.
Of course, not everyone is that way, but ads have different objectives, and they are effective.
Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#116I 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…
Telegram's clients are amazing (including the ones developed by the community, such as telega.el for Emacs). It is miles ahead of any other messenger in the UX department. Friends of mine who have (reluctantly, in some cases) tried it out quickly got stuck because of this single point.
The other thing it's got going for it is that its protocol is designed to work in low-bandwidth environments. Yeah, the protocol looks crazy - but it really does work. Imagine being on an underground train and only occasionally getting a few seconds of internet while passing a stop: Most messengers will at most start showing you a "Connecting ..." status, Telegram will do a full state sync (minus media files, of course) in the same time.
Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#117I 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…
I love Desktop Telegram for many reasons but mostly because it's Open Source: https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop
Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#118Hmm... 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 ...
Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#119Is 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.
You can export chats and other information anytime. The Telegram help and many other sites have details on how to do it.
Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
When Facebook bought WhatsApp for 20 Billion USD, WhatsApp had about 1 Billion users, or slightly less. So that's at least 20 USD per user that Facebook paid.