Telegram CEO and Founder Pavel Durov made the arrival of Telegram Premium last weekend familiar, after many details about the subscription had already been leaked. “It also allows users to support Telegram and join the club that will be the first to receive new features,” Durov said. All existing functions of the chat service remain free, he emphasizes.
With the subscription, Telegram gets a new source of income, in addition to the ads it shows in “one-to-many” channels, where one sender messages a large number of followers. According to Durov, those kinds of ads are “a greater success than expected.” Subscribers will no longer see such ads. Durov: “I believe that Telegram should be funded primarily by its users, not by advertisers. So our users will always remain our number one priority.”
Extra options and limits doubled
Durov has not yet announced the subscription price, but according to leaked details, Telegram Premium will cost 5 euros per month. For this, subscribers get all kinds of extra options, such as animated avatars in chat lists and exclusive stickers with all kinds of effects. They also no longer see advertisements on public channels.
For subscribers, the limits in the app are also doubled. For example, they get access to a thousand channels, 20 chat folders, four accounts, ten favorite stickers and 400 GIFs. They can also use longer bios and captions, upload files up to 4GB and automatically convert voice messages to text.
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1.6 million Dutch people
Telegram distinguishes itself from competitors such as WhatsApp with, among other things, group conversations that can have up to 200,000 participants. Telegram also offers the possibility to follow channels, just like with YouTube or Twitter.
Telegram has also gained popularity in the Netherlands in recent years. At the beginning of this year were 1.6 million Dutch people active on Telegram, of which 600,000 use the app daily.
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Half a billion active users
The chat service experienced strong growth this year. Telegram was downloaded more than 100 million times worldwide in the first quarter. Telegram was thus according to Sensor Tower after TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp the most downloaded app worldwide. The app has ample 500 million active monthly users.
Even after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the chat service there are many users† On Telegram you can find a lot of messages about the war in Ukraine, from both sides. For many Russians, the app has become a more important source of information, now that more and more foreign media and platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are in the country. be blocked.
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