Telegram requires third-party clients to show ads
corefork.telegram.org
corefork.telegram.org
Maybe I'm just not a normal user of telegram and I'm lucky that this doesn't affect me, but this seems like the most reasonable way to do ads. Though something along the lines of discord's nitro would be a nicer way to fund things. I wonder why telegram doesn't do something like that.
I'd guess because paid features quickly exclude people in poorer countries and people that prefer to remain anonymous, both of which are avid telegram users.
Also, remember that WhatsApp choose the same route, despite actually being non-free for quite some time. It might be simply be the better market strategy.
This is almost never a problem in Silicon Valley and rarely a problem in the US, but most definitely a thing in other countries.
For example, in Poland where I live, we have some really advanced online payments systems that we use locally, but none of them are supported by either App Store or Google Play. Because those systems exist, paying on line with a debit card (credit cards are much less of a thing here) just seems strange, especially if you're 30+, non tech savvy and don't speak English. A lot of people refuse to give their credit card number to anyone because they fear it might be stolen.
There was a survey by one of our audiobook streaming companies (Storytel), and this is indeed a big problem. If I remember correctly, about 90% of users who signed up for an account but churned at the "choose your payment method" step cited "won't pay with a payment card online" as the reason. Since our payment systems aren't compatible with subscriptions, they needed to add a way to subscribe through your phone carrier.
This is probably the reason why What's App never got much traction here. Instead, people went with Messenger, which was always free. It also doesn't require giving out your phone number, something we seem to have more issues with, as compared to Americans for example. What's App is usually known as the app you use to talk to family members abroad, Messenger is the thing you use for everything else.
There are, of course, other reasons why you might not be able to get apps / subscriptions. Being underage is probably the most common one, once again, you probably do have money, but it's probably in cash.
So, no - Telegram never did appeal to those who prefer to remain anonymous - at least those of them who paid attention.
The general sentiment I see in the furry fandom is very anti-crypto.
Anecdotally: I use telegram (and have since Facebook purchased WhatsApp) and I am neither purveyor nor purchaser of “crypto scams” or “dodgy nonsense”.
i’m placing my bet that they soon will
they can’t lose money forever
https://mspoweruser.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/telegram-...
This will be the worst decision they’ve made in the history of the product.
Private chats are not (and promised to be never) affected.
That aside, this is terrible product strategy, because everything any normal user will hear is “Telegram has ads now”.
Personally I think they are vastly overestimating their position, but we’ll see. I’m not impressed and will probably stop using it.
Of course, I might be wrong, but the difference I'm trying to get across here is that unless every hair salon and restaurant you go to has Telegram stickers in the window (they don't), it's not comparable to Instagram, because switching to a new IM is for a lot of people like switching channels on a radio, the FOMO of losing all your friends is not as prevalent because people are already using multiple IMs and are much more open to trying new ones than they are trying new social networks, because IMs are "light". They don't want their IMs to be social networks, and the reason some of them are becoming social networks is pretty clear: it helps with user retention and lock-in. It's one of many reasons why Signal deserves praise, they don't bother with that.
As fas as I know telegram is very popular in arab countries for example, so they do have real network effect there at least.
Perhaps you're not aware but Signal is developed by the Signal Technology Foundation, which is an American non-profit organization. So yes, people do "give millions without any expectation of return".
If the $50M USD you're referring to is the money donated by WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, it was definitely not given with the expectation of returns, as donations rarely are.
Elon Musk has also confirmed publically that he has donated to Signal:
https://bird.trom.tf/elonmusk/status/1348506592518438914 (mirror)
https://nitter.kavin.rocks/elonmusk/status/13485065925184389... (mirror)
Although, I think most of those telegram features are cute little addons and aren't really core to the purpose of the app (messaging).
Personally, I use signal for everything and have gotten my friends on it as well.
It's a noble goal
which resources does tg have that signal don’t?
This means they can hire more employees. In fact, telegram has more than 10 times the employees and 25 times the funding than signal has.
Telegram is burning at least $100m a year
Now the feature is there for stickers, it is just that the implementation isn't as good.
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360031836512-St...
Signal merely replicated TG features - Secret chats and made it mainstream. It uses AWS for cloud hosting, and I don't trust AWS as an intermediary for routing chats. There are red flags all over!! There's nothing new in Signal, AT all!
0) they have extreme operational expenses (they choose to invest into their own infra instead of using cloud)
1) they make no revenue
2) they have no business model
3) they failed ICO, got in trouble with SEC and now owe lots of debt
4) they don’t want to raise money or sell
5) they don’t want to make money off users
As people like to point out quite often, this tends to be the cheaper way, especially at scale.
they're going all in, they try to make the greatest financially sustainable and privacy friendly message platform or they die trying.
they're brave.
now the plan is to get $2m from each ads partner, of which only $1m can be used towards ads and the remaining $1m is a “deposit” which can’t be withdrawn unless you plan to spend $10m
also consider that none of the channels can disable ads nor get any % cut
I wonder why. I would be fine with paying something like "1$ per month or 10$ per year" paid-tier "Telegram Premium" subscription.
Website owners merely requiring that browsers show their ads?
The whole post could have been summarized to these few words: "Telegram has now joined the club of the apps that have grown of age and need to figure out a way to actually make money".
Which is perfectly understandable. I just think that slamming unsolicited ads in front of people's eyeballs is a very bad and uninspired way of making money - and collecting their data so you can target better ads is even worse.
I'd be happy to pay up to $5 a month for a decent messaging app with relatively high adoption, modern features and a well-supported API to build integrations. And many HN users would probably prefer to pay too.
Unfortunately, we are not the majority of the users. Any fee for a widely adopted app that used to be free would cause a bleeding of users. And, on the long run, Telegram is likely to make more money from advertisers rather a $5 fee.
I'm getting quite sick of this cycle. We keep seeking for products that respect our privacy and do not show us ads. We may find them, we may stick around with them for a while, then at some point they are also like "sorry, now we also need to make money, therefore we'll also add ads/trackers", and then the cycle repeats.
Nobody's infrastructure is free. And while it's understandable, I also don't want to rent somebody else's servers in exchange of ads I didn't ask for. I'd be happier to just pay for the rent, but nobody is providing me with that option. Everyone finds the ads/trackers model more profitable than the subscription model.
I'll try and convince as many friends as I can to switch to NextCloud Talk (if I'm hosting the service then I know that I won't get surprises), but in the meantime we really need to talk about federated apps. A centralized infrastructure to store messages for millions isn't cheap, and eventually anybody who maintains that infrastructure will have to find a way to make a profit (or at least not make a loss) out of it. We need to have smaller and more maintainable "clouds" to connect users to one another. It's insane that we're in 2021, we can deploy services anywhere within seconds, and yet most of the messaging traffic generated by billions still goes through the gateways of 4-5 apps.
p.s. btw, client-line commands like Bitlbee (and any libpurple-based integration) should unaffected, unless they display ads as _actual_ messages (which would be a horrible decision).
Telegram's client app is Free Software, they actually provide an API, and third party clients are permitted, so I think it's in a rather different club here. I think it'd be fairer to frame this as a requirement of their network and network service, rather than their app.