Telegram, the encrypted messaging app and old haven for drug dealers, plans to make money in 2021, founder Pavel Durov said Wednesday.
The announcement comes as the app approaches its eighth anniversary and “approaches 500 million active users,” according to the statement Durov posted on Telegram channel. Any new user that coming pour in, he explained, brings more server costs for the company handle. “A project of our size needs at least a few hundred million dollars a year to go ahead,” he said.
All parts of the platform that are currently free to use will be retained free, he said, adding that Telegram will add a few new paid ones in the new year functions for business teams or ‘power users’. He did not go into the specifics of these new functions, aside from the fact that Telegram would bring its own advertising platform on board. (In a separate post Telegram announced it would be rolling out a clubhouse-like permanent voice chat feature– although again, this may or may not be one of the aspects monetized.)
According to the post, it is not intended to show ads in private one-to-one or group chats, since, in Durov’s words, “communication between people should be free of any advertising.” Instead, he pointed to what he called Telegram’s “one-to-many” channels, which have their own special group following a specific Telegram poster. These work more like a Twitter feed than a text message conversation, and like Twitter, they get the treatment of ads.
So far, the platform has largely been floated through Durov’s own personal savings. In 2018 it took off $ 1.7 billion dollars from private investors in the hope of developing its own blockchain token that could potentially make money from the platform. But after two years and a significant amount of backlash from the SEC, Durov announced in May that he would stop the attempt and refund a good $ 1.2 billion back to the investors behind it.
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As for what these potential ads might look like, that’s still a bit unclear. Twitter’s ad systems, such as we have noticed have their own issues in the past, and as Durov’s post rightly points out, you may find that ads are swapped in your usual scroll kind of worthless, especially if they replace regular messages like Twitter ads often do. On the other hand, every ad on any social media platform is generally An unwelcome experience at best, even if it isn’t awful watch. Plus, considering how creepy in-app ad platforms are usually, you can imagine why this wouldn’t be the most welcome news for Telegram’s more privacy conscious users.
Durov, for his part, promised that Telegram’s upcoming ad systems would be ‘easy to use’ and that they respected the Telegrammers privacy. But considering how we heard that exact promise only about each player in the tracking and targeting game, it might be worth taking Durov’s word with a grain of salt.