How about instead, you offer me the ability to buy into your platform? Offer me the ability to use the platform, and pay a monthly fee, as opposed to seeing ads.
Durov hears you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29146473
Telegram Ad Platform
91–100 of 256 posts
Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Active user here. There are some great channels related to my hobbies, it has proper desktop version etc.
Comparable to something like Reddit would you say?
Somewhat? I often compare it to a mix of Twitter and Reddit for people that haven't experienced IRC.
If you have experienced IRC, it's basically that. You have smaller rooms (groups) and bigger ones. Every room has their active 1%, their own rules and customs and after a while, their own inside jokes etc.
Otherwise, it's a bit like reddit because you join groups that are usually about a certain topic / niche (general programming, JavaScript, Counter Strike, cooking, what have you) and it's also a bit like twitter because there's often a "hot topic" for a day or two with small things happening in between. Also because no one in their right mind treats those chats like actual group chats, as in, you don't read all the messages you missed. After a weekend i have at least 10k "missed messages".
This comparison is also cool because it reminds you to treat telegram just like reddit and twitter: it's public basically. Anyone can join groups you're in and log every message (there's plenty bots that do that) and they can see the contents of a public group even without joining. It's not encrypted by default and frankly, barely anyone uses secret chats, if only because ppl are on their desktop half the time anyway
Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#93I hope this works for telegram! They were going to need to launch ads at some point and this transparent plan to get started seems like it considered the user base. It’s become my favorite messaging app and I enjoy the pace of innovation. I get it’s not end to end encrypted but that’s not what I am asking for with telegram - just a decent messaging app that makes it easy to remain anonymous (not sharing phone number)…
First real ads that I see is everywhere. From my perspective it's too much of them. There need to be some frequency filter. And quality of those ads are very bad: casino, crypto channels. Some of those channels have less than 10k subscribers.
Consider the fact that to many people and especially advertisers that Telegram is primarily known for stuff like this: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/hope-not-hate-telegram-nazis
No reputable brand is going to want to touch this for a long time unless they clean up their service which they have been notoriously reluctant to do.
Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#94Here's hoping there will be a way to pay for no ads. But a question to HN: why have we not seen a mass-market adoption of a P2P, non-centralised messaging system that requires no external services to work? Mesh and other sorts of networks are cumbersome and have not reached mass-market adoption, so what (technically) is stopping a true E2E P2P platform?
A talk by Moxie at CCC deals with this exact question.
> “ Considerations for distributed and decentralized technologies from the perspective of a product that many would like to see decentralize.
> Amongst an environment of enthusiasm for blockchain-based technologies, efforts to decentralize the internet, and tremendous investment in distributed systems, there has been relatively little product movement in this area from the mobile and consumer internet spaces.
> This is an exploration of challenges for distributed technologies, as well as some considerations for what they do and don't provide, from the perspective of someone working on user-focused mobile communication. This also includes a look at how Signal addresses some of the same problems that decentralized and distributed technologies hope to solve.”
Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#95Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like a much more prolific version of Discord, where the focus is clearly on large groups, and it handles this surprisingly well. I’m not sure why people used to draw comparisons with Signal, to be honest, given that anecdotally virtually no one uses Telegram with E2EE, and its implementation of it is remarkably crippled.
IMO mostly because Telegram is a daily driver for many to keep in touch with friends and family. Just like signal but with more fancy functions. While discord still is a weird gaming community, more along to a teamspeak server. I also don't have exact numbers but private chats are heavily used in some parts of telegram (mainly the grey or black markets)
Discord if you need sub discussions in the same community.
Most communities don’t need that, so telegram is good enough for them.
There is alot of crossdrift, on crypto telegram nobody cares if they are currently browsing discord or telegram
Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#97Any Telegram users here? I've only ever heard it used when talking about batshit American cults. Not exactly a target audience i want to reach.
Active user here - telegram * is fast * has native apps * has amazing stickers * lets you share almost unlimited media * has a decent bot API * is secure enough for my personal use (though I don’t pretend to use it as a secure messenger nor do I advocate for it if this is important for someon. Please do not start an argument about this again, search up telegram on hn.algolia for plenty of comments about security) * c…
The stickers are completely open; Anyone can submit new packs. Animated stickers are also supported.
The clients are all opensource, and the APIs usable by anyone.
It has tons of little nice features as well. E.g., organizational directories, great search, fine grained notification settings, … .
There is also voice chat support, which is pretty nice.
Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#98The minimum spends look ridiculous. >To ensure and maintain high quality of ad content, a minimum advance payment of €2,000,000 is required to launch ads on the Telegram Ad Platform. >Of this payment, Telegram holds €1,000,000 as a deposit, and makes the remaining sum available to the advertiser to spend on displaying ads. >If the contract is terminated and the advertiser spent less than €10,000,000 on ads within the…
> This seems like a solution to Telegram's cashflow problem - doesn't look like it has much runway left.
There’s a lot to unpack here. Telegram has plenty of runway left, probably. Pavel Durov is not strapped for cash. That’s just a fact. They’ve been pushing out regular updates with features and other development work that could’ve easily been delayed for the ad platform if it was a priority. They’ve actually deployed bandwidth intense things like video calls, too, which ostensibly are lower priority.
What this does to me is signal that Telegram wants to engage with serious advertisers to start with. Because the content is injected into channels, of which there are many, it likely is easier to abuse than other networks. So the solution is to make the barrier to entry sufficiently great that only serious advertisers will buy in.
So, I’m less inclined to say they’re in need of cash flow than they are wishing to finally make money, and not do so with low quality content.
Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#99The level of uptake of this FSB offshoot platform is surprising.
Re: Telegram Ad Platform
#100The minimum spends look ridiculous. >To ensure and maintain high quality of ad content, a minimum advance payment of €2,000,000 is required to launch ads on the Telegram Ad Platform. >Of this payment, Telegram holds €1,000,000 as a deposit, and makes the remaining sum available to the advertiser to spend on displaying ads. >If the contract is terminated and the advertiser spent less than €10,000,000 on ads within the…
> This seems like a solution to Telegram's cashflow problem - doesn't look like it has much runway left. There’s a lot to unpack here. Telegram has plenty of runway left, probably. Pavel Durov is not strapped for cash. That’s just a fact. They’ve been pushing out regular updates with features and other development work that could’ve easily been delayed for the ad platform if it was a priority. They’ve actually deploy…
> Pavel Durov is not strapped for cash. That’s just a fact.
I love Telegram over anything else like others, but I don't think you can say "that's just a fact" unless Durov's finances are public, which as far as I know, they aren't. So yeah, probably he isn't strapped for cash, but that's not a fact, it's a guess.