Popular messaging platform Telegram has announced the launch of a new premium tier of service to monetize a portion of its user base. According to company CEO Pavel Durov, the company, which has more than 700 million monthly active users, is introducing the new tier to meet the needs of users who require more bandwidth and storage space.
Telegram’s new premium tier will expand user capabilities
Telegram, one of the most popular messaging apps in the cryptocurrency world, has announced the introduction of a paid premium tier for its service that will allow users to access new features and extend some of the features already available. The move comes as the company seeks to monetize a significant portion of its user base, which recently reached the milestone of 700 million monthly active users.
According to CEO Pavel Durov, the premium tier is in response to user demand for bandwidth and storage upgrades from within the app. He stated.
We realized that the only way to offer even more features to our most demanding fans while keeping existing features free was to make these limitations a paid option.
The paid version increases the number of channels you can follow from 500 in the free version to 1,000, and also allows you to create 20 chat folders with 200 chats in each folder. Pricing for this new service was not disclosed at the time of this writing, but Techcrunch estimates that it is close to the $6 range.
Path to Monetization
Telegram, which provides messaging and content management systems to thousands of individuals and businesses on a global level, is not the first attempt to monetize services on its platform. Last year, the company introduced a sponsored message feature, allowing advertisers to place such messages on large channels with more than 1,000 subscribers.
The biggest attempt at monetization, however, was the launch of Telegram’s own token, called Gram. This effort succeeded in raising more than $1 billion from investors around the world, but was ultimately halted by the U.S. SEC, which issued a temporary restraining order against the company in 2019. This forced Telegram to cancel the token launch, return the funds to investors, and also pay a fine to the agency.
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