Telegram Launches Premium Tier Benefits Seeking to Monetize Platform – One of the most well-known messaging apps for cryptocurrency enthusiasts, Telegram, has announced the launch of a paid premium service tier that will provide users access to new features and enhance some of the ones that are already available.
The firm, which just passed the milestone of 700 million monthly active users, is making the move in an effort to monetize a sizable portion of its user base. According to CEO Pavel Durov, the premium tier is a response to the demands of a particular group of users who wanted to extend their bandwidth and storage from within the app.
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He stated:
“After some consideration, we came to the conclusion that adding a fee to those raised limits was the only way to satisfy our most ardent fans while keeping our current features free.”
The ability to follow 1,000 channels, up from the free tier’s limit of 500, and the creation of 20 chat folders with 200 chats each are two of the additional capabilities that are available to paid users. As of this writing, the cost of this new service tier has not been made public, however Techcrunch has estimated that it will cost around $6.
This is not Telegram’s first attempt to make money off the platform, which offers messaging and content management systems to thousands of people and businesses globally.
In order to enable advertisers to place sponsored messages in major channels with more than 1,000 members, the business introduced the feature last year.
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The launch of Telegram’s own cryptocurrency, called gram, represented the biggest attempt at monetization. The project was successful in attracting more than $1 billion from investors worldwide but was finally shut down by the U.S. SEC, which in 2019 issued a temporary restraining order against the company. Due to this, Telegram decided not to proceed with the token launch and gave investors their money back.
