Live data from Hacker News

Messaging apps shouldn't make money – Pavel Durov and Telegram

wired.co.uk

11–20 of 75 posts

Re: Messaging apps shouldn't make money – Pavel Durov and Telegram

#11
>Secure messaging should be free for everyone. Displaying ads alongside your private communication seems out of place, even immoral

I completely agree. In this ideal situation, who pays for it? The article seems to have left this small detail out. How do you plan on getting this service to work without someone footing the bill?

Re: Messaging apps shouldn't make money – Pavel Durov and Telegram

#13

This raises the obvious question, then who is going to pay for them?

Who pays for e-mail?

With my personal email - google. They handle the costs of storage and transport and in exchange they show me ads and collect high level data. With my work email - my company. They pay to keep the email secure and contextual and in exchange I keep it mostly related to work.

Re: Messaging apps shouldn't make money – Pavel Durov and Telegram

#15

This raises the obvious question, then who is going to pay for them?

Who pays for e-mail?

Who pays for e-mail?

This is the question of a zen master. In four words you've said more than the entire hagiography of TFA. Yes of course, someone has to pay for electricity, but when using an open protocol the user chooses who pays and what they're paying for. If Facebook could go back in time and kill email, they would in a heartbeat. The communications of free people should not be supervised, whether by dictators or by capitalists.

Re: Messaging apps shouldn't make money – Pavel Durov and Telegram

#16
I think the key thing here is that Durov has the money from selling stock in his previous company (12% w/valuation of 3-4 billion) which means he can afford to pay to support the app in the meantime without any external financial help. I do think there are different ways to monetize messaging outside of pushing advertisements into people's face or selling information and third-party paid apps are a good option.

In that regard I think the title is misleading: Durov plans to make money through the app eventually, just not through selling people's information or push advertising.

Re: Messaging apps shouldn't make money – Pavel Durov and Telegram

#19
post #10

This read like an ad for Telegram.

Yeah, but everything's true. Encrypted by default, huge bounty for security researches, fast, great cross platform apps.

Encrypted with their home-grown crypto. Telegram is not fully free and open source. Encryption by default? That has to be new, it was not when I recently checked. And of course there is http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-crypta...

Use Signal/Textsecure, folks.

Re: Messaging apps shouldn't make money – Pavel Durov and Telegram

#20

I think the key thing here is that Durov has the money from selling stock in his previous company (12% w/valuation of 3-4 billion) which means he can afford to pay to support the app in the meantime without any external financial help. I do think there are different ways to monetize messaging outside of pushing advertisements into people's face or selling information and third-party paid apps are a good option. In th…

You can always say that the messaging app itself isn't making money but the underlying technology is.
Post reply on HN