[HN Gopher] Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M ...
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Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
Author : kupatrupa
Score : 176 points
Date : 2021-03-15 12:23 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| RichardHeart wrote:
| I would absolutely love to advertise there. Facebook, google,
| youtube, telegram all have cryptocurrency advertising banned...
| Which is rather disgusting, seeing as it's the highest
| appreciating asset class in the history of mankind.
| rchaud wrote:
| > highest appreciating asset class in the history of mankind.
|
| This kind of value proposition is exactly why crypto ads aren't
| permitted on many ad platforms. There are too many fly by night
| operators selling snake oil to the desperate and the greedy.
| Why would an advertiser assume liability for that?
| synergy20 wrote:
| the only thing missing from telegram for me is the 'friend
| circle' thing, i.e. everyone can have a list of friends and
| he/she can publish only to that group of people, something like
| wechat's 'moments', so far it's roughly a forum(many can talk on
| common subject) and a broadcast(channel by manual subscription).
| also I'd like to disable the 'preview url' as it takes quite some
| space on the screen when I'm only interested in text
| dgellow wrote:
| Let people pay for premium stickers. Split between Telegram and
| the artists. Win-win-win. Line does this well (at least it did in
| the past, I'm not in Asia anymore)
| fullstop wrote:
| Given Telegram's user base I can see these premium stickers
| being copied and made public very quickly. I'm not sure how you
| prevent this.
| timlatim wrote:
| I think algorithmically detecting paid stickers on upload can
| work. I needed to detect duplicate images for a pet project
| once and I've got satisfying results out of using perceptual
| image hashing. Building up a database of hashes for existing
| files takes time, but after that looking up an image to see
| if it's in the database is fast, and it handles some basic
| color transforms, as well as minor cropping.
|
| I'm not sure whether this particular approach is feasible at
| the scale of Telegram. But I believe this arrangement can be
| a good income source without upsetting users the way ads
| might.
| dgellow wrote:
| Give a special logo/color/background to the premium stickers
| or to premium users (people paying 1EUR/month for example).
| fullstop wrote:
| Premium users is likely the way to go, then. I feel like
| the background / logo could be emulated.
| dgellow wrote:
| You can easily imagine a shiny border that cannot be
| emulated easily. In any case it doesn't really matter if
| some people can copy the content. As long as enough users
| are willing to pay for premium stuff, that's good. And
| it's definitely the case, lot of people are happy paying
| for cosmetic content when it's done well.
| zeronine wrote:
| Isn't that title a little contradictory?
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I switched to Telagram from Whatsapp, after the change in privacy
| update. I've seen a lot of my contacts switch over too. Things I
| don't like:
|
| 1. Low volume during calls
|
| 2. The UI needs work.
|
| Like for example, I click on my contact messages. To call that
| contact. I now have to select a ... menu item. Or once I start
| typing a message, the option to attach photos disappears.
| dimtion wrote:
| The UI issues you are mentioning are very minor and have been
| like that in Telegram for years. I would say that there are
| different way to present a feature and coming from Whatsapp you
| are used to one way of doing things.
|
| IMHO Telegram has the best UI and UX of all other "family
| friendly" chat app.
|
| I do agree on the Voice and Video calls that need more
| improvement.
| ash wrote:
| Strange to see people switch from end-to-end encrypted WhatsApp
| to non-encrypted (by default) Telegram. What do I miss?
| junippor wrote:
| Obviously you're missing that there's more factors to a
| person's choice than default encryption.
| ash wrote:
| The author of the parent comment specifically mentioned
| "change in privacy update" as the reason to switch. Until
| WhatsApp drops end-to-end encryption, there's not that much
| evil they can do. They can't read your messages. You don't
| _need_ to trust WhatsApp (so far).
|
| Telegram can have the best privacy policy, but they can
| always read your messages. You _have_ to trust Telegram to
| do the right thing. (Except those few who opt in to use
| encrypted chats.)
| AndriyKunitsyn wrote:
| You have to trust WhatsApp, because it is closed-source.
| Nothing stops them from planting a backdoor and enabling
| it specifically on your device, or from updating the E2E
| protocol to make it insecure.
|
| If your threat model includes WhatsApp/Telegram
| developers, you can't use WhatsApp but you can actually
| (carefully) use Telegram's E2E chats, because Telegram's
| client is an open-source app with reproducible builds.
| E2E in a closed-source app is useless, and all UX
| inconveniences of E2E are just "security theater".
| ash wrote:
| Closed source WhatsApp is a problem. And a backdoor is
| possible. However, it's still detectable, albeit not
| easily. I'm sure researchers are closely looking at
| WhatsApp binaries. WhatsApp backdoor would be a scandal.
|
| Sure, open source WhatsApp would be better. However, we
| are comparing detectable potential backdoor with totally
| undetectable _existing_ access to all non E2E chats on
| Telegram servers. Telegram developers can already see
| everything _right now_. (By the way, opt-in E2E
| encryption is almost useless. Encryption should be the
| default, and enabled for group chats too.)
|
| Between these two options WhatsApp situation is clearly
| better.
| newscracker wrote:
| Wouldn't you have to trust WhatsApp to do the right thing
| too, as far as end to end encryption is concerned? How
| would anyone know if the original Signal E2E is still
| around or changes have been made to it? WhatsApp already
| collects, stores and shares more metadata than Signal
| does. Are there any audit reports from trustworthy
| parties on WhatsApp behaving as expected on encryption?
| Or are we just relying on someone working on WhatsApp to
| become a whistleblower?
| ash wrote:
| Sure, WhatsApp can go rogue at any time. Signal app is
| obviously better. However, at least we have a possibility
| to find out if WhatsApp goes evil - decompilation,
| protocol analysis are still available. I wouldn't also
| discount fear of reputation losses if E2E vanishes from
| WhatsApp.
|
| Compared to maybe-evil-in-the-future WhatsApp, default
| Telegram is already evil, because they have access to all
| communication _right now_. What do (or will) they do with
| all that data?
|
| (Opt-in E2E - and only for 1-on-1 chats - is almost
| useless. Encryption should be the default.)
| junippor wrote:
| Why is this such a big issue? When I use Telegram in the
| past (and I did for years) every chat I had was
| encrypted. Enabling isn't that complicated.
| EduardoBautista wrote:
| Enabling E2E encryption in Telegram limits you to only
| the device that the chat was created in. WhatsApp and
| Signal allow you to use their desktop apps (not the best
| app but that isn't the point). This allows me to use a
| full sized keyboard when I have the need.
| rakoo wrote:
| It's not complicated, but it's still something you have
| to manually do (meaning many will never do it because
| they don't know it exists) and you lose a lot of features
| that seem to be the selling points of Telegram
| vikbytes wrote:
| Presumably the fact that Facebook owns WhatsApp and continues
| to erode all the "protections" users of WhatsApp initially
| had from the invasive tentacles of Facebook into their data
| on WhatsApp.
| EduardoBautista wrote:
| Apart from the fact that they have access to your contacts,
| I haven't felt that the E2E encryption of WhatsApp has been
| in danger of being eroded.
|
| I do use Signal when possible, but I find WhatsApp to be
| secure enough for my day to day messaging with friends and
| family.
|
| I can't say the same about Telegram since it does not have
| E2E encryption on by default on all messages.
| barbazoo wrote:
| For many it was the prospect of metadata being sent to
| WA's big brother Facebook. Personally I don't want
| anything to do with the FB ecosystem so I deleted my WA
| account. I didn't have anything against WA per se, I
| really like the app , just the connection to FB is
| unacceptable.
| csmattryder wrote:
| Please just let me pay for it.
|
| I pay 12EUR/yr for email, it's ad-free and works. Happy to do the
| same arrangement for a IM service.
| synthmeat wrote:
| Telegram has incredible and large cryptocurrency scene. I
| honestly think this would fly, if they would accept
| cryptocurrency as payment as well.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| They tried an ICO, but that went nowhere.
| bildung wrote:
| Yeah, the SEC filed a complaint and Telegram settled:
| https://www.complianceweek.com/regulatory-
| enforcement/telegr...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Maybe just accept USD, EUR, and GBP instead.
| fareesh wrote:
| I like their product, I think they should charge a low fee. I'd
| pay to use it.
| analog31 wrote:
| I've paid for cellphone apps where the only benefit is to make
| them ad-free. I wonder if the problem is one of the sheer
| magnitude of revenue, to wit: Maybe they can capture
| $10/user/year on subscription fees, but the sky's the limit on
| how much they can get in $/user/year from advertisers.
| vhiremath4 wrote:
| What about ads + paid plans with no ads? I feel like that's a
| great middle ground for everyone who would delete the app if it
| had ads. Am I missing something with that thought process?
| krisdol wrote:
| Ads create a twisted profit incentive that counters what
| Telegram wants to be, even if Telegram only pursues a privacy-
| friendly ads experience at first. Sell functionality, storage,
| customization, or digital assets. I know Discord doesn't _just_
| make money off of these things, but that revenue stream is a
| compatible option for Telegram.
| tsjq wrote:
| I'm totally in for this.
| jarito wrote:
| Once a company starts selling ads, privacy is no longer in
| their interest. Even paid customers will get lumped in to
| monitoring and reporting to satisfy / push up ad revenues.
| ex3ndr wrote:
| That never was true under Paul's management - ads was just to
| keep stuff alive.
| thrwaway-adtech wrote:
| The problem with this model from the advertisers perspective is
| the people with disposable income who will pay for your ad free
| experience are the exact people they want to show the ads to. I
| don't know if telegram has this problem, but it's certainly the
| problem in most ad + premium models because if I am advertising
| something like a car, I want the guy who can afford $10/month
| for her texting app to see my ad more than the people who
| don't! Those ads are the most profitable and have the best
| chance of subsidizing the free users, who you need in your
| network to keep the paid users.
|
| (Throwaway because I work in ad tech and don't want this
| sentiment linked to my employer)
| _jal wrote:
| This just cements my belief that advertisers no longer
| consider making people feel intruded upon by ads a bad thing
| - they directly target people who do not want to see their
| messaging.
|
| The goal is to nonconsensually force their message on people
| who don't want it.
|
| Fuck these people.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The goal is to nonconsensually force their message on
| people who don't want it.
|
| What part of the post you replied to indicates
| nonconsensual?
| thrwaway-adtech wrote:
| It's not that people who want ad-free experiences are
| _targeted_ , it's that people who have money to spare every
| month to buy a premium experience (in this case, not be
| annoyed by an ad), are highly correlated with people who
| you want to reach because they have money to buy your
| product, and that's who they want to advertise to.
|
| Advertisers don't want to be spending money to reach people
| who will never buy their product, either because they hate
| their ad or because they don't have money, but
| unfortunately there is no way to know who these people are
| in advance. Spending $10/month to not look at text ads is a
| sure fire way to signal you have money so you aren't in the
| later camp, and people who hate ads with a passion and
| won't respond to them are rare in the wild (hn
| nonwithstanding :D)
|
| Too many people think they can monetize by just "sprinkle
| some ads on it" without thinking about why an advertiser
| would buy those ads.
| mahogany wrote:
| Just to be pedantic (because I was a bit confused), the
| emphasis shouldn't really be on "targeted" because
|
| > and that's who they want to advertise to
|
| is just a fancy way of saying "targeting". What I think
| you're saying is that it's not _people who want ad-free
| experiences_ that are being targeted. Rather, those
| people belong to a broader group -- those with money to
| spend -- who are being targeted.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Online advertisers are much simpler than that.
|
| They want sales, or signups or whatever acronym they need
| to force up. Group A converts at 10%. Group B at 1%. The
| advertiser may have a theory of why these groups are
| different. Increasingly, we don't. FB, especially, does a
| lot of automated targeting.
|
| Marketers tend to have good instincts about these things,
| because patterns are repetitive and simple. That said, I'm
| pretty confident that advertising to subscribers would be
| more effective than advertising to non subscribers.
|
| In my mind, "person who subscribed to a thing online" is
| just a good qualifier. It probably correlates to a lot of
| other qualities like "shops online often" or whatnot. Those
| "theories" don't really matter though. They're just a
| starting point.
|
| Advertisers don't know or care what people think of the ads
| nor how they make the 98.3% who didn't buy anything feel.
| All they know is that they didn't click/buy/whatever.
|
| I think people imagine online advertisers like a geekier
| version of mad men. It isn't like that. There's not the
| pretensions of understanding or influencing psychology.
| It's more like stock trading.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| How does Youtube Premium handle this?
| vhiremath4 wrote:
| Ah this makes total sense. Thanks for the additional info!
| Hamcha wrote:
| Why would you think someone who actively pays to not be
| served ads would be a good fit to be advertised to?
|
| Eg. My personal experience with buying products (food,
| software, SaaS, etc) based on ads conditioned me to actively
| distrust products that are heavily advertised compared to
| stuff that's just mentioned in reddit threads or used by
| friends. Would I be a good fit for ads?
| deadmutex wrote:
| I think I took an advertising class long time ago (so long
| ago that I don't remember if it was an actual advertising
| class, Advertising 101 or some marketing class). But, what
| stuck to me was, that most people said that they were
| unaffected by ads, and the data showed otherwise. Ads also
| help with brand recognition etc. Typically, people are
| _very_ familiar with some space, say desktop CPUs... and
| they 'll say, "I'll never buy an intel CPU just based on an
| ad", and that might be true. However, when it comes to a
| space that's completely far away from their day to day
| expertise, say... weedkiller in the garden, and they're
| more likely to trust a branded product that they've seen
| product placement or other types of ad.
|
| Of course, not everyone is that way, but ads have different
| objectives, and they are effective.
| ebiester wrote:
| If you are willing to pay for something that is free, it
| generally means you have more disposable income. It's not
| that you become more valuable, it's that the remaining
| cohort becomes less valuable.
|
| Few people making $30,000 a year are going to pay to
| disable ads. many people making $200,000 or more are going
| to consider it.
| carschno wrote:
| The goal of an ad is mostly to make potential buyers aware
| of a specific product/brand. Hence, showing ads to
| potential buyers is most effective, even if many/most will
| not become actual buyers (like you, apparently). The
| conversion rate among the potential buyers (who can afford
| to pay for an ad-free service) is still much higher than
| among users who agree to see the ad (by not paying for an
| ad-free service), but cannot afford to buy the product.
| adrr wrote:
| Disposable income. Demographic is different for people who
| pay to remove ads than people who don't. I pay to block ads
| on Hulu and Youtube and buy upcoming brands like Vuori,
| Away, Peloton, Allbirds etc.
|
| Marketing works. How do you think your friends learned
| about product that are mentioned in reddit threads?
| Guarantee it wasn't organic. If the company was launched in
| the last 10 years, it was built on VC dollars used to spend
| tens to hundreds millions in marketing.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Exactly. FB would never do this, and google would never do it
| for search. It's adverse selection.
|
| Spotify is a good example. The ad supported version has uses:
| it's a funnel for paid users, a deterrent to competition, a
| data farm, etc. Making money is not one of those uses. I
| suspect that this is because the best advertisers audience
| subscribes.
|
| Also, opt out ads also harms your upside. EG, fb make more in
| ad revenue than they could ever make in subs. You don't want
| to pursue an ad-based strategy that excludes the possibility
| of a win like that, even if it's a long shot.
| loonster wrote:
| As a user, I'm wouldn't want my searches to be ad-free.
| Companies pay good money to put their ads there, and they
| may outperform the search algorithms.
|
| Practices I don't like: - Making sponsored searches look
| like regular searches. - Pay to Play, where your content
| gets demoted if not a paid subscriber (Thinking of a non-
| google websites here).
| missedthecue wrote:
| Ignoring the adverse selection problem for a moment, why
| don't you think FB could make more money on subs? Facebook
| revenue per user is $30 in the US. As long as the monthly
| subscription is greater than $2.50 a month, they are making
| more that way.
| dalbasal wrote:
| So, two points.
|
| First, I think facebook's _global_ revenue per user is
| $30. US should be much higher. My back-of the envelope
| has it @ $225 per year currently ($43bn revenue from 190m
| users)... I may be wrong. Don 't hurt me.
|
| Second, they make $225 (or $30) per user while also
| maintaining a very high number of users. You can't expect
| to put up a paywall and not lose users. So, to reach
| parity, you need to charge enough for subs to replace
| those.
|
| For FB, it's flat impossible. That's why I picked it as
| an example. You cannot have 190 million americans as
| paying users at any price. You definitely can't have that
| many @ $20 per month.
| thrwaway-adtech wrote:
| Because many people would not spend 2.50 a month for
| Facebook, and their value prop of "all your friends are
| here" would collapse for many users.
|
| And then you have adverse selection putting downward
| pressure on the revenue per free user.
| loonster wrote:
| Your argument would be stronger if you used the same one
| that you used in your initial post.
|
| As you previously stated, revenue is not distributed
| evenly. For sake of argument, the actual numbers for 5
| users could be: 120, 30, 0, 0, 0 . The ad-free subscriber
| would not pay the average profit, they would need to pay
| the average profit of a paid subscriber. If we assume
| only the whales would pay for an ad-free experience, they
| would need to pay $10/month and not $2.50.
| wdb wrote:
| I think Spotify makes their ads purposely annoying to use
| it as funnel for paid plans. I have the feeling the ads got
| worse over time so stopped using the app.
|
| I normally don't mind listening to the news and commercial
| breaks on the good old radio.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Well... that's part of the premise of freemium. They
| could probably kill ads entirely and like without that
| revenue, but then why would people subscribe?
|
| For spotify this is tolerable. Network effects exist, but
| they aren't everything. For telegram, network effects are
| the whole thing.
|
| "Freemium" doesn't usually work the way people think it
| does. "Just let me pay to remove ads" is rarely good
| business advice. If your business model is ads, you stick
| with ads. If your business model is subs, you might have
| an ad-supported version for other reasons.
|
| Even in old media, paid channels/papers/etc. still have
| ads. They don't make an ad free version.
| grishka wrote:
| There will be no ads in the sense you're suggesting.
| redisman wrote:
| Ad providers want to target their ads or you'll get the worst
| performing ads which won't generate much revenue for anyone.
| grishka wrote:
| They may _want_ it, but it 's Pavel Durov who makes the
| ultimate decision, and, knowing him as well as I do, I'd
| say that it's very unlikely he'll allow any semblance of
| tracking or targeting. He has no sympathy for surveillance
| capitalism and "growth".
|
| Besides, as I said in another comment, ads will only exist
| in channels. Channels have already sold ads directly since
| about forever.
|
| Also: https://t.me/durov/153
| rootsudo wrote:
| More reason to offer an ICO and make it all about governance and
| ownership.
| newscracker wrote:
| Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, has repeatedly said the
| following on his Telegram channel about ads on Telegram:
|
| - ads will be only on very large public channels and not on all
| public channels
|
| - there won't be any ads in chats
|
| - the ads will be contextual, and not based on tracking or
| profiling users and their activity
|
| - users will be able to opt out of ads
|
| Other monetization options like donations and subscriptions are
| also in the works.
|
| His channel is at https://t.me/durov
|
| Personally, I wouldn't mind paying a modest fee for this service.
| risyachka wrote:
| Same. UI/UX-wise and super light and blazing fast native
| clients - I would gladly pay like ~$5/month.
| synthmeat wrote:
| If I remember well, they used DigitalOcean as provider? Was it
| just for frontend servers? When Russia banned it, they just
| blanked banned (almost) all of the DO's range.
| fullstop wrote:
| It was AWS and Google. [1]
|
| 1. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43865538
| baybal2 wrote:
| And what so? China bans half of the Internet. It's actually
| harder now to find a range that is not banned that one which
| isn't for VPNs.
| synthmeat wrote:
| No, I'm not making a statement about blocking, just using it
| as device to try and infer what's Telegram's infrastructure,
| I'd assume it's majority of their expenses.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Well. Guess it's time to start looking for a new messaging
| solution. I've really liked Telegram for its clean, uncluttered
| interface, and its stickers. But I really don't wanna start the
| adblock race with their desktop and phone clients.
| fabiandesimone wrote:
| I would pay for Telegram in a heart beat. It's just fantastic.
| jug wrote:
| Hmm... I'm not sure ads are compatible with their business model,
| because won't they only truly bring in value to Telegram if the
| advertisers get to use targeted ads i.e. get to know the Telegram
| users? ... on this privacy oriented service ...
| neartheplain wrote:
| Didn't WhatsApp solve this problem? Were they self-sustaining
| before the Facebook acquisition, or am I misremembering things?
| DSingularity wrote:
| If the founders want to become billionaires maybe self
| sustaining is not the goal.
| znpy wrote:
| yup, 1$/year IIRC.
|
| I'd be okay with this, as long as there's an anonymous way of
| paying.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| IIRC it's unclear how many people ever ended up paying. The
| first year was free, and then (many?) people got free
| extensions, year after year.
| neartheplain wrote:
| Was that revenue enough to keep the lights on indefinitely?
| I'm having a hard time Googling this, but I recall an article
| circa the FB acquisition which stated that WhatsApp's
| subscription fee model + efficient backend programming had
| already become self-sustaining. Wish I could find that
| article now.
| justapassenger wrote:
| All we know for sure if that they had some revenue. No one
| knows if they were reliably self sustaining. Especially as you
| grow, the costs balloon.
| jakecopp wrote:
| Are there many here who use a Matrix client like Element? [1] Or
| one of the dozens of compatible chat apps? [2]
|
| Why don't more people use it? I can't understand why people would
| jump from one closed source silo like WhatsApp to another closed
| source Silo like Telegram or Signal.
|
| The UX of Element is terrific now.
|
| [1]: https://element.io/ [2]: https://matrix.org/clients/
| einpoklum wrote:
| 1. Signal is FOSS. Telegram is partially FOSS (the client).
|
| 2. At least on the desktop, the UX of element is pretty bad
| IMHO. It's slow and feels like a web browser (and it probably
| is something like that under the hood, I would bet). Telegram
| feels much nicer (but only as an instant messaging app; you
| can't make it look and feel like IRC for chatting, while
| Element can be twisted to partially resemble an IRC client).
| Signal is closer to where Element is at, in my experience.
| chrisan wrote:
| Anyone know of a windows client that doensn't show unread message
| counts of archived (not muted) chats in the system tray?
| mosselman wrote:
| Is there a reliable way to backup Telegram conversations
| including media? It seems like a good idea to make some before
| they change the endless storage and scroll back, just in case.
| newscracker wrote:
| You can export chats and other information anytime. The
| Telegram help and many other sites have details on how to do
| it.
| Aachen wrote:
| Yes, in the desktop version there is an export feature since
| late 2018 iirc. It was done because GDPR though that's just an
| excuse, equivalent (in this aspect) privacy laws had existed
| since the 90s in most (all?) of the EU.
|
| There is also third party software for it that has more
| options, the internal one is a bit limited. Some are based on
| tg-cli, so they're not redoing the work of implementing a
| client but just format the history into an archive format. I
| think the project that I contributed to (years ago) was called
| something like Telegram history formatter.
|
| Backups of your data are always a good idea, regardless of who
| owns it. Triply so if the service is a bit shady (no business
| model, for instance). I learned that lesson the hard way with
| Grooveshark (which totally had a business model and did
| basically the same as YouTube till someone found evidence of
| the authors uploading copyrighted stuff themselves, but until
| then it seemed more stable than Telegram seems today).
| rnikander wrote:
| Anyone else unable to update the Telegram macOS app? In the "App
| Store" app, it downloads, and then a popup says: "Telegram could
| not be installed. Please try again later." It's been doing that
| for a week. (macOS 11.2.1)
| pgt wrote:
| Please just let me pay for Telegram.
|
| And let me implement my own payment provider for bots because the
| Telegram ones suck.
| Aloha wrote:
| I'm an early adopter for telegram, and I'm right there with
| you.
|
| I signed up in 2014, basically the first or second time it hit
| HN, and over time, I've built out a pretty decent social
| network on there, and run a dozen or so specialty community
| chats. I'd be glad to pay them something, 25 a year or so, even
| if I don't get anything special from it (though, if I did want
| something, it'd be better access to support if I should need
| it), just as part of making the service sustainable.
| Aloha wrote:
| I'm an early adopter for telegram, and I'd be glad to give them
| some money.
|
| I signed up in 2014, basically the first or second time it hit
| HN, and over time, I've built out a pretty decent social network
| on there, and run a dozen or so specialty community chats. I'd be
| glad to pay them something, 25 a year or so, even if I don't get
| anything special from it (though, if I did want something, it'd
| be better access to support if I should need it), just as part of
| making the service sustainable.
|
| It'd made coordination in my life so much easier, and I
| legitimately cannot fathom going thru the pandemic without it,
| it's been my social lifeline.
|
| Mostly I love it because its a desktop has parity environment, I
| literally sit in front of a computer 12+ hours a day, why do I
| want to limit myself to a phone-only service.
| chrisjarvis wrote:
| Would you be willing to describe more about how you engage with
| this service? I like the service but haven't found many
| opportunities to use it.
|
| Did you move the "specialty community chats" over from another
| site like Reddit? Do you talk with people you know IRL on it?
| Mainly just wondering how you built out a social network for
| yourself on Telegram.
|
| just wondering thanks!
| Aloha wrote:
| They were communities that formed organically on the service
| from people with otherwise shared interests. While we
| recruited users by word of mouth and from other services,
| we've formed our own community on the service.
|
| I do indeed talk with many people on it that I otherwise know
| in real life, often it goes the other way, I meet people via
| the service, then we eventually meet in real life.
|
| Most, but not all, are furry fandom oriented, and telegram
| really fills a hole left by the closure of other instant
| messaging services. To give you an idea, I run about a dozen
| chats on there, with around 1400 unique users.
|
| If telegram were to go away, many of us would move to
| discord, IRC, or a mix of both.
|
| The community the ability to host its own services, and I've
| given thought what to do if a shutdown looks likely. Had the
| telegram server side code been open sourced, we'd likely spin
| up our own service. While we do have the skills internally to
| reimplement the server side components it'd be a pretty large
| amount if work to do so.
| Aachen wrote:
| Same. I've started moving away since a few months, though,
| because the revenue model was not happening and I can see how
| well it works compared to even a big commercial undertaking
| like Facebook messenger or Slack. The software development
| alone must cost many millions, not to mention the movies people
| are sharing actively.
|
| It is (was?) getting super super fishy, given that everything
| is plain text (they have some tricks to claim it's not, but the
| bottom line is that they can read all your chats except that
| experimental "secret" chat or two you might have). If I can
| start to pay for the service, perhaps it's worth considering,
| though the lack of encryption is almost equally worrying. The
| branding is privacy, but the reality is the exact opposite, and
| while there used to be hope that they would eventually
| implement it, I've given up on any encryption being forthcoming
| by now.
| Aloha wrote:
| The fact is, a majority of what I'm talking about, I have
| zero care of the service can see it. There is some stuff that
| I do want privacy, for that I have secret chats, with the
| limits inherent to it.
|
| Perhaps I'm alone, but I never really wanted a secret chat
| service, I merely wanted a modern AIM, with first class
| mobile and desktop support.
| traveler01 wrote:
| I mean it makes sense if they launch an ad service for public
| channels. They're already filled with ads and you can't even
| distinguish ads from real posts. Giving these creators and
| advertisers a chance to have their ads placed there will be very
| profitable for Telegram while not raising privacy issues (the
| channels are a great way to distribute ads since, if you follow a
| Linux channel you'll likely be interested in seeing System76 ads,
| right?).
| traveler01 wrote:
| Also they should start accepting donations from users. I would
| donate.
| Hani1337 wrote:
| I really like Telegram, if only I could convince anyone to
| actually use it.
| perardi wrote:
| I quite like Telegram, because I am apparently an old man at the
| age of 37, and I greatly prefer typing on my real physical
| keyboard, and not on my phone.
|
| Telegram's desktop client for Mac is great--it's fast, it has
| feature parity with mobile clients, and it _works_. Messages get
| delivered and stay in sync, and I don't need to somehow link my
| phone to my main machine via QR code to act as a gateway.
|
| And if they introduced ads, with an option to pay a subscription
| to remove them? Here's my...well, it's Telegram, so here's my
| cryptocurrency, I guess...but here's my money.
| [deleted]
| iagovar wrote:
| I would pay. I like Telegram too, for some reason I find myself
| liking it much more than WhatsApp, it feels snappier, web and
| desktop Telegram fells nice, and I don't need having my
| SmartPhone connected. Some time ago it was unthinkable due to
| network effects, but now many of my peers have Telegram too,
| even non-tech people.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| WhatsApp doesn't let me login from two mobile devices. Can't
| use it from phone and tablet at the same. It's moronic.
| Telegram does, so...
| ddeck wrote:
| You may not prefer it, but I don't think it's moronic; it
| was a design choice.
|
| Whatsapp messages pass through their servers, but do not
| remain there. They are effectively sent from the sending
| device to the receiving device. This means that your
| messages reside on your device. When you use the desktop or
| web client, it's basically remote operating your phone.
|
| This famously allowed Whatsapp to achieve massive scale
| with relatively few resources. [1]
|
| Telegram messages reside on their servers. This allows for
| features such as those discussed above - multiple
| synchronized clients etc. The downside (aside from
| potential privacy concerns) is that it requires much larger
| amount of infrastructure, which presumably is one of the
| reasons they need $700 million.
|
| [1] http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/3/31/how-whatsapp-
| grew-...
| f1refly wrote:
| Whatsapp is pretty much proprietary xmpp, and xmpp
| handles multi-end to multi-end encryption graceously.
| tazjin wrote:
| Telegram's clients are amazing (including the ones developed by
| the community, such as telega.el for Emacs). It is miles ahead
| of any other messenger in the UX department. Friends of mine
| who have (reluctantly, in some cases) tried it out quickly got
| stuck because of this single point.
|
| The other thing it's got going for it is that its protocol is
| designed to work in low-bandwidth environments. Yeah, the
| protocol looks crazy - but it really does work. Imagine being
| on an underground train and only occasionally getting a few
| seconds of internet while passing a stop: Most messengers will
| _at most_ start showing you a "Connecting ..." status,
| Telegram will do a full state sync (minus media files, of
| course) in the same time.
| theleftfielder wrote:
| It's funny to see this towards the top of the comments here.
| Feels like not that long ago that Telegram updates would be
| downvotes on HackerNews because "you should never trust an
| app that designed their own encryption protocol."
| tjohns wrote:
| Telegram's UX is outstanding. Their E2E encryption (for
| "secret chats") is also questionable. Both are
| simultaneously true.
|
| It depends on your needs.
|
| I use Telegram like an IRC client, primarily participating
| in medium/large (20-200 user) group chats. In that sense, I
| don't really care about encryption because the channels are
| semi-public anyway. I just want whatever client gives me
| the best experience.
|
| (On the other hand, if I were discussing sensitive topics,
| I'd probably pick something else.)
| perardi wrote:
| As the author of the parent comment...
|
| ...yes, I am aware Telegram does not use the absolute best
| practices, and at the very least, I imagine it can be
| cracked wide open by a nation-state intelligence agency.
|
| Which is why, for my occasional super-secret must-be-hush-
| hush chats, I use other clients. For my day-to-day chats?
| Telegram. Because, to be privileged, to be flippant: the
| NSA is welcome to read my texts about what I'm buying at
| Target this afternoon.
| nine_k wrote:
| This is not about encryption; I personally do not rely much
| on Telegram encryption being bulletproof.
|
| It's about the right UX choices. Speed is a first-tier
| feature.
| perardi wrote:
| "designed to work in low-bandwidth environments"
|
| And I have actually experienced this, fairly frequently.
|
| T-Mobile international roaming, at least on my provided
| corporate plan, is throttled to 128kbps. And Telegram works.
| Messages come through quickly, and it seems fairly smart
| about deferring media loading.
| tazjin wrote:
| Yeah, I've been on occasionally shitty mobile networks in
| Africa for the last months and Telegram almost always works
| when other things don't. Experiencing this kind of
| connectivity for a while really is perspective-altering.
| bordercases wrote:
| > Telegram's clients are amazing (including the ones
| developed by the community, such as telega.el for Emacs). It
| is miles ahead of any other messenger in the UX department.
|
| Many of Telegram's official clients do not support Secret
| Chat, an issue which has been open for at least five years
| now. Their community picks up the slack.
| f311a wrote:
| That's because there is no support for multiple devices
| when you use secret chats.
| bordercases wrote:
| That doesn't help if I just want to use one device and
| yet it still doesn't support secret chat.
| yewenjie wrote:
| Telega.el for Emacs is really cool with some very unique
| features.
|
| https://github.com/zevlg/telega.el
| bordercases wrote:
| Yes indeed I use it, it doesn't refute my statement.
| tazjin wrote:
| Which ones don't? I used the Android client and telega,
| both of those do. I believe the iOS one does, too.
| bordercases wrote:
| For sure: Linux.
| izacus wrote:
| Telegram actually provides a fully featured C++ library you
| can just include - it has a pretty good API that does most of
| the complex things for you.
|
| You just register callbacks for message lists / chat messages
| and notifications and you're all set.
|
| This allows people to easily build full-featured clients for
| pretty much any platform and it makes it easy for everyone to
| keep up. Very smart platform design.
|
| I'm very disappointed that something made to be more open
| like Signal completely failed in this aspect and has ended
| being a walled garden with poor quality clients.
| sim_card_map wrote:
| Exactly, Signal creator is actively against 3rd party
| clients, because they use his infrastructure for free:
|
| https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuec
| o...
| mercacona wrote:
| The issue was branding, not bandwidth. There're 3rd party
| clients:
|
| https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Are there any clients that will run on older versions of
| Android.
| sim_card_map wrote:
| No, not just branding. Read the message I linked to.
|
| He explicitly says he doesn't want other clients to use
| their infra.
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| There is nothing, technically, that he can do to prevent
| third party clients. That's the same thing we did in the
| times of ICQ, AOL and MSN Messenger.
|
| And there is an actual demand for features not provided
| by the official client, as stated by the amount of PRs
| contributed by non-Signal developers waiting in their
| GitHub repo, so people will continue to come with their
| own changes.
| gojomo wrote:
| Marlinspike in the linked comment is clearly also
| disapproving of the use of Signal's servers, so it's more
| than branding. Unless he's blessed 'MollyIM' explicitly
| since, there remains some risk it could be locked out at
| any time.
| hu3 wrote:
| I love Desktop Telegram for many reasons but mostly because
| it's Open Source: https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop
| vxNsr wrote:
| Only quibble I have with Telegram is their "find nearby"
| feature, it's clearly abused by bad actors to funnel users to
| porn, so my family sees the whole app as not family friendly,
| bec they don't want their tweens and teens with phones, that
| are mostly locked down, having this loophole. There no way to
| turn it off, or lock it behind parental control, so until then
| we're still stuck on WhatsApp.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Good thing your family has no access to the internet,
| otherwise they might be exposed porn in google image search.
| skinkestek wrote:
| There won't be ads in 1-1 or groups.
|
| There will be ads in channels that opt in (but those already
| have sponsored posts in some form already often, only manually
| inserted.)
|
| So, some will say: how long before they change their terms
| again and the ui is plastered with ads?
|
| We'll see. So far Durov has kept his words to a degree that few
| others have.
|
| Edit: I also think Telegram has dropped the cryptocurrency-idea
| now.
| vmception wrote:
| its so crazy to me how big Telegram is to crypto, while there
| are people who only know about Telegram for giant conspiracy
| groups like Q-anon which I never run across
| pradn wrote:
| Having to QR-code into a web-app is quite a pain. I wish we
| didn't tie identities to a phone number like that. Messenger
| offers even more seamless "handoff" between form-factors, and
| that's why I find myself preferring it. It's easy for web state
| to go away, so I find myself having to log back in more often
| than I'd like. Plus, you can't log in when the phone's out of
| battery. I really like how snappy Telegram's mobile clients
| are. I like their stickers (probably the most fun of any chat
| app these days) and their link preview is quite good. So I'm
| rooting for them.
| grishka wrote:
| As I understood it, there will be official ads in channels.
| Channels already do ads, but Telegram will step in to be an
| intermediary and take a cut. So from the end user perspective,
| nothing will change at all.
| schoolornot wrote:
| I wish my buddies who are hung up on Signal's E2E, and
| rightfully so, would at least try Telegram to see what they are
| missing. An E2E-default version of Telegram would put the final
| nails in Signal if you ask me. The decision to resist this, and
| they could implement it fairly beautifully for new devices like
| iMessage does, and the in-house MTProto protocol do seem kind
| of bizarre to me. But look how far it's taken them. A beautiful
| product.
| vinay427 wrote:
| I'm honestly not sure what I'm missing when avoiding
| Telegram's non-private conversations. There's no desktop
| client support (unlike Signal which works on a desktop mostly
| seamlessly, including group video) and no option at all to
| backup and sync conversations between devices (unlike
| Signal's rather limited options).
|
| If I was alright with Telegram's non-E2EE conversations, I
| would prefer WhatsApp for its wider adoption among my contact
| base.
| eptcyka wrote:
| What do you mean, no desktop client support? There's a
| fully featured desktop client for Telegram, and I've never
| had my desktop clients have their sqlite database corrupt
| itself.
| vinay427 wrote:
| I was trying to emphasize this further which is why I
| (ninja) edited in the second paragraph, but unfortunately
| it still isn't very obvious:
|
| > when avoiding Telegram's non-private conversations
| tjohns wrote:
| It depends on which desktop client you're using.
|
| Telegram's native Mac app (https://macos.telegram.org/)
| supports E2E-encrypted secret chats. Their cross platform
| Qt-based app (https://desktop.telegram.org/) does not
| support this feature.
|
| Notably, the experience in a Telegram secret chat behaves
| differently then regular chats. A secret chat is tied to
| one device; you can't start a secret chat on your phone
| and pick it up on your tablet/desktop. There's also no
| server-side message history. Regular (non-secret) chats
| don't have these limitations.
| Angostura wrote:
| Signal user here, on iOS and using the Mac client. What am I
| missing?
| skinkestek wrote:
| - Seamless sync and backup
|
| - 100x more people use it (I joined Signal years ago and I
| still have 1 actual conversation)
|
| - The speed and the level of polish is unmatched
|
| Of course for any serious Signal user it isn't an
| alternative but for many of us we only use it for postcard
| level anyway.
| meibo wrote:
| Give Telegram or Matrix a try. They are both miles ahead of
| Signal and their teams on both sides actually seem to care
| about openness and usability.
|
| Signal actively discourages third-party clients and doesn't
| accept community contributions in most cases(not that you'd
| actually want to, because their codebases are trash.) We
| can do better.
|
| Matrix with bridges and your own server is quite a nice
| experience. Have a look at beeper: https://www.beeper.com/
| eptcyka wrote:
| Ability to send pictures without lossy compression, for
| one. Scheduled messages, group chats that preserve history
| (allowing one to rotate a phone number without losing
| access to history). Video calls that allow one to sync the
| video orientation. UX that is just better designed for the
| lay person (at least as far as my rudimentary a/b testing
| goes).
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| > The decision to resist this [...] and the in-house MTProto
| protocol do seem kind of bizarre to me
|
| It's so bizarre indeed that it actually looks suspicious.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I'll probably use whichever of them manages to allow me
| creating accounts and logging in without handing over my
| phone number.
| bennofs wrote:
| Last I tried, telegram desktop on Linux didn't support e2e
| encrypted chats which is sad.
| imsesaok wrote:
| telegram desktop doesn't support e2e chats at all. it's a
| mobile only feature, and it doesn't sync between devices,
| even between phones.
| swagmoney69 wrote:
| Actually the Mac client supports it for some reason.
| fsflover wrote:
| > it has feature parity with mobile clients
|
| There are no secret chats though.
| eptcyka wrote:
| The native macOS client (not the Qt port) does have secret
| chats. Or at least it used to. The only other platform
| besides Android and iOS.
| eejjjj82 wrote:
| ASK ME FOR MONEY AND I WILL PAY YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE!
| kartoshechka wrote:
| The only thing that annoys me in tg is zero feed management. To
| keep up you have to constantly check the channels one by one
| yewenjie wrote:
| I will be super happy to pay for Telegram if they open-source all
| of their code - including the servers. Most of their apps are
| FLOSS and support reproducible builds already, except the server.
|
| https://telegram.org/apps#source-code
| andi999 wrote:
| How did Telegram spend a billion?
| Aachen wrote:
| Have you used it? And any other messenger? I find the
| difference in quality (speed, features and their consistency,
| synchronisation of data and notifications in realtime, data
| transfer speed, few if any bugs, cross platform, etc. etc.)
| quite noticeable. I'm actually moving away because it's too
| good to have no known business model and _still_ no encryption
| to speak of after a decade of claiming they 're the privacy
| messenger.
| josu wrote:
| The founder's response to the article:
|
| Why users shouldn't worry about ads on Telegram
|
| I read an article that cautioned users from switching to Telegram
| from other apps, because "Telegram is going to introduce ads".
| This is misleading for at least 3 reasons:
|
| 1. There will be no ads in chats on Telegram. Users who rely on
| Telegram as a messaging app, not a social network, will never see
| ads. Private chats and group chats are and will always be ad-
| free. As I outlined in December, ads are being considered only in
| large one-to-many channels (like this one), which do not exist in
| any other messaging app. So users ditching older apps for
| Telegram won't increase the number of ads in their lives.
|
| 2. User data will not be used to target ads. We believe that
| collecting private data from users to target ads the way
| WhatsApp-Facebook do is immoral. We like the approach of privacy-
| conscious services like DuckDuckGo: monetizing services without
| collecting information about users. So if we introduce ads in
| one-to-many-channels, they will be contextual - based on the
| topic of the channel, not targeted based on any user data.
|
| 3. We are fixing ads that are already here. In most markets,
| content creators on Telegram already monetize their content by
| selling promotional posts in their channels. This is a chaotic
| market with multiple third-party ad networks pushing intrusive
| ads that create a negative user experience. We want to fix this
| situation by offering a privacy-conscious alternative for channel
| owners.
|
| Users will be able to opt out of ads, but I do think that
| privacy-conscious ads are a good way for channel owners to
| monetize their efforts - as an alternative to donations or
| subscriptions, which we are also working to offer them.
|
| Our end goal is to establish a new class of content creators -
| one that is financially sustainable and free to choose the
| strategy that is best for their subscribers. Traditional social
| networks have exploited users and publishers for far too long
| with excessive data collection and manipulative algorithms. It's
| time to change this.
|
| https://t.me/PavelDurovs/107
| tomComb wrote:
| > User data will not be used to target ads.
|
| I actually prefer personalized (targeted) ads, as long as it is
| a company I trust with my data. And they generate more revenue
| so they would need fewer ads.
|
| I realize people will argue that they don't generate more
| revenue, but if that were true then how has this whole industry
| developed around them?
|
| By tossing out personalized ads we are throwing out the baby
| with the bathwater.
|
| And there are so many truly nasty things going on on the
| Internet, how has killing personalized ads become one of the
| defining battles of our times? Heck, even just looking at my
| ISP the list of nasty things they are doing without much push
| back or notice is scary.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Most of the nasty things around the internet can be traced
| back to personalized ads.
| tomComb wrote:
| But again you are conflating the irresponsible handling of
| my personal data - eg. my ISP collects and sells my
| personal data without my authorization - with personalized
| ads.
|
| There are lots of companies that have a history of never
| selling, losing, leaking etc. their users' data, such as
| Apple & Google. So why is it one of the defining battles of
| our times to force Google etc. to show me less relevant
| (and therefore more) ads, versus, say, stopping my ISP from
| its obviously irresponsible practices?
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Those are the types of promises one should never trust profit-
| seaking enterprise to keep, though.
|
| The only way to to be accountable to users is to remove the
| profit motive, or charge a fee to use.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Would that be enough revenue? The article doesn't list yearly
| costs but implies it's a lot with $1bb in debt needed (also do
| they advertise at scale to fund growth? that would be big
| source of $ that would be worth the cost).
|
| Maybe if they really do grow 1:many channels to actually be
| competitive to FB products they could charge businesses for API
| access to provide customer support & empower company:1 user
| messaging.
|
| Kind of more like Twitter which doesn't have a ton of user data
| to target ads as well - though Twitter does allow audience
| matching, if Telegram allowed matching to user phones that
| would be valuable.
| tw04 wrote:
| Do they really need advertisers? I'm not sure why all these
| companies think the whatsapp route isn't possible. People are
| happy to pay a small yearly subscription for apps if they're
| truly doing something useful. While I don't personally use
| telegram, I'd argue it falls into the category of "useful enough
| to pay for".
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| It's unclear what you mean by the WhatsApp route. Their route
| was getting bought and subsidized by Facebook, and eventually,
| show ads.
| ObsoleteNerd wrote:
| I've used Telegram for years now, along with almost all my
| family and friends. I'm a huge fan of it, and it's basically
| the only IM I use anymore (other than Signal with some tech
| friends).
|
| If Telegram adds ads, rather than offer us a chance to just pay
| them, I'll delete it instantly and push everyone I know to do
| the same.
|
| I absolutely despise ads of any kind, and go to a decent amount
| of effort to block them from appearing on any device in my
| household. I'm totally happy to (and do) pay for useful
| services/content but if you don't give me the choice of paying
| and just stick ads in it then it'll disappear off my devices
| instantly.
| WilTimSon wrote:
| You're in the minority and pretty much exercising your first-
| world privileges to dictate what you think the service should
| do. It's intended to work for everyone across the world, no
| matter how poor, and I'm 100% sure people from India or
| Brazil would leave it completely if they had to pay to use
| the app.
|
| Having non-targeted ads and, potentially, premium features
| that you can pay for is an optimal middle ground for an app
| of this size.
| [deleted]
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| I wonder if you're typical though. Many people will likely be
| using it along with other IM apps to communicate with
| colleagues/friends/family and balk at paying even marginal
| amounts. Perhaps an ad supported model with ad free premium,
| or free to receive, but pay to send over x messages a month
| etc.
|
| Whatever they decide they'll likely annoy lots of their
| users.
| davidweatherall wrote:
| Are you happy with services that have ads, but give the
| option to remove them for a subscription fee?
| GrinningFool wrote:
| Not the OP but I'm coming from what sounds like the same
| place.
|
| In theory yes but does the ad SDK used by the app still
| gather data on me, even though the ads are turned off/app
| is paid for? Without clear indication that it will not, the
| answer for me is 'no'.
| davidweatherall wrote:
| Cool! Thanks for the reply - so you'd feel much more
| comfortable with a subscription to opt out of all
| tracking and ads?
| bombcar wrote:
| I prefer to word it slightly differently - have a paid
| service that offers a free ad-supported version.
|
| The danger, of course, is that once you separate it out
| like that you quickly realize that the advertisers want the
| paying customers, not the freeloaders and so ads encroach
| on the he payment plans, too.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| i have zero problems with this kind of monetization. i
| mean, that's why i pay for youtube and spotify -- i wanna
| support the services/content creators in some way, but i
| abhor ads.
| fakedang wrote:
| Don't most you tubers and Spotify channels have patreons?
| fernandotakai wrote:
| some do and i do pay for those -- but you can't really
| support every single channel you watch (at least for me,
| youtube replaced normal tv).
|
| so paying for youtube premium gives me an ad-free
| experience while also helping content creators.
| fullstop wrote:
| I would not mind them monetizing large public channels or
| selling sticker packs. If I ever see ads in my 1:1 or small
| groups, though, that's the end.
| maneesh wrote:
| Hulu once wrote about how, by offering a higher cost plan
| without ads, they removed a lot of the complaints about their
| service
|
| I've always wondered if FB offered a similar option -- $5 or
| $10 a month to opt out of all adds and tracking -- if a lot
| of the complaints about their service would also disappear.
| xNeil wrote:
| Some did the math - the price Facebook would need to charge
| every user would be $11 a month. Sorry I can't remember
| WHERE I read it though.
| [deleted]
| ign0ramus wrote:
| That number seems wildly off. Facebook's annual revenue
| for 2020 was $85.97 Billion[1]. With 2.8 Billion monthly
| active users, they'd need to charge $3 a month to exceed
| that number.
|
| [1]: https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-
| details/...
| slymon99 wrote:
| In the US it's much higher. Many users provide
| practically no revenue to FB (presumably FB wants the
| growth for the future).
|
| https://www.adexchanger.com/platforms/facebook-made-
| almost-2...
| xNeil wrote:
| Found the original article, I hope this helps :)
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/15/would-it-make-us-love-
| or-h...
| dotancohen wrote:
| When Facebook bought WhatsApp for 20 Billion USD,
| WhatsApp had about 1 Billion users, or slightly less. So
| that's at least 20 USD per user that Facebook paid.
| dzonga wrote:
| it's from their quarterly financial reports. rough
| estimate. for developing markets they generate about 2$
| per user. and in developed markets like $7 per user.
| newscracker wrote:
| Facebook does offer a paid option for "companies", called
| Workplace. IIRC, it costs $3 per active user per month. I
| don't know about feature parity with the surveillance based
| facebook.com. Of course, Workplace cannot be used with
| random people that one may interact with across different
| spheres of life.
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| >I absolutely despise ads of any kind
|
| Can the business that pays your bills survive without ads?
| cyrksoft wrote:
| I use Telegram a lot and would gladly pay for it. However, that
| route is not so easy. People in Latin American countries can't
| really afford to pay for apps. If they have to choose between a
| free WhatsApp (who everybody uses) and a fee (which can be high
| in real terms for poorer countries) they will choose WhatsApp.
|
| They can also do what companies like Steam and Netflix do,
| charge a differentiated fee by country. Some games which cost
| 20 US dollars might cost less than 2 US dollars in countries
| like Argentina (Steam)
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| How much money does whatsapp actually get from people in
| those countries? I was under the impression that ad revenue
| from third world users was very low. How much would it be to
| charge them the same amount they would get from ads?
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _However, that route is not so easy. People in Latin
| American countries can 't really afford to pay for apps._
|
| AdGuard and Cloudflare (at least for Warp+) adjust their
| monthly and annual subscription rates based on location.
|
| See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| This incentivizes inequality. I live in Mexico, earning 10x
| more than most, yet I could pay less.
| rchaud wrote:
| It also improves affordability for those that don't make
| 10x the national average.
| zpeti wrote:
| This is basically why Facebook doesn't offer a free option
| either, they make hardly anything from third world countries
| per user, but prob $50+ per year from USA users.
|
| So - third world countries can't pay a subscription, and for
| USA its just not worth it because hardly anyone would pay
| $50+ a year to use Facebook.
|
| Catch 22.
| Aachen wrote:
| > less than 2 USD [per month]
|
| How about 2USD/year? WhatsApp ran on 1 until Facebook bought
| it.
|
| I did the math at the time: with the users per server and
| separate user stats they were publishing, each employee could
| be paid very, very generously. Don't quote me on it but I
| think it was something like half or a quarter million per
| year. Yes, they were small and growing, as you grow you get
| more overhead as you try new things like eg. business
| customers or whatever, so maybe it can't be 1/year anymore
| (also because a decade of inflation happened in the
| meantime), but you can get very close to that or choose to
| operate in low and middle income countries at break-even or a
| small loss. I wouldn't find that unfair (as someone who earns
| in the top 1% of worldwide incomes, household income like
| 150k/year -- yes I'm looking into how to put that boatload to
| good use -- and who would be paying the compensatory high
| price).
| tubularhells wrote:
| Not everyone wants to sell user data. Their business is in
| private communication. WhatsApp reads through all your shit,
| whether you like it or not.
| sfifs wrote:
| Nope. WhatsApp can only potentially read your group messages
| since 1:1 messages are end to end encrypted. You shouldn't
| spread FUD
| tubularhells wrote:
| This was in the news some months ago, they have backdoors
| for 1:1s that they use to comply with government agency and
| police data requests. Do go look it up.
| Aachen wrote:
| This has not been found, that would be major news on
| mainstream channels. (Do go and cite sources.)
|
| If you need some obscure news source for this, it's very
| unlikely to be true and unless you or a trusted friend of
| yours has reasonable expertise in the relevant field
| (reverse engineering or cryptography might be relevant,
| perhaps both depending on the type of backdoor) you can't
| rely on some controversial source being correct.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| This is untrue.
|
| https://signal.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp-backdoor/
| tpush wrote:
| Group messages are also end-to-end encrypted.
| alfongj wrote:
| WhatsApp group chats are end to end encrypted too. You must
| be thinking of... Telegram, where only secret 1:1 chats are
| end to end encrypted
| thatguyagain wrote:
| I guess one threat in that scenario is if some other competing
| service actually does succeed in their ads driven model, they
| can attract a lot more users, because it's free? But I have no
| idea about running a company this size tbh, just thinking out
| loud.
| fabiospampinato wrote:
| "some" people are happy to do that. Some people just don't want
| to pay for software regardless of anything else.
|
| I have friends who had switched to other messaging apps instead
| of paying WhatsApp 1EUR/year or whatever it was, and by any
| measure I live in a rich country and paying 1EUR/year for my
| friends would have been pretty much completely irrelevant
| economically.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| This is part of the issue. Audience. Mass consumer does not
| know and/or does not care. If that is the case, the company
| can easily determine that Zoidberg approach of 'Why not both'
| is very rational, if annoying to people like me.
| Hani1337 wrote:
| We live in a world where you can find almost any computer
| service for free. Not everyone is like lazy americans
| willing to take the credit card out at any road bump. They
| will find a service that does the same for free. I can
| barely convince my friends with that mindset to come to
| Telegram when they already majorly use Messenger. Not only
| do they need an incentive to switch to Telegram, adding a
| fee to use the platform would simply kill the app. There
| are many ways to monetize services that don't require users
| to pay just to join, and this is the way forward even
| though it's meeting resistance from companies, it will win
| in the long run. Don't fight it, work with it and learn to
| take advantage of it instead.
| mromanuk wrote:
| > "A project of our size needs at least a few hundred million
| dollars per year to keep going"
|
| They have 550M MAU, using a freemium model and assuming a 1%
| payment conversion, that's 5.5M monthly paying users. With a
| price ranging $1 to $10, that can be $66M ~ $660M ARR, at least
| they can try.
| notahacker wrote:
| That envelope maths might explain why they're pinning their
| hopes on VC FOMO cash injections to explore more speculative
| revenue generation models.
|
| 1% conversion to paid at $120/year sounds high for a
| consumer-focused app particularly popular in developing
| countries whose competitors are free and whose competitive
| advantage is supposed to be that the app doesn't know who you
| are. And that's apparently less than they need to pay the
| bills, never mind justify their valuation.
| mromanuk wrote:
| 100% agree
| rozab wrote:
| Although I suspect Discord is still some way from
| profitability, it's monetisation strategy seems to be working
| well (charge subscription for premium membership with small
| features like custom emojis, animated profile pics, better
| audio quality). A surprising amount of people go for it.
|
| Telegram has many nerdy hobby communities which could buy the
| cosmetics or whatever and subsidise the service for the normal
| users.
| moritonal wrote:
| A thing that a lot of people pay for is the better video
| screen sharing quality. People are happy to have "just about
| okay" for free, and "good" for a subscription fee.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| +1 to this. I give Discord something like 5 bucks a month
| for 1080p video streaming at 60 FPS
|
| There's an "unlocked" 4K one if you want to pay $10 a month
| but I still only use a 1080p (at 144Hz) monitor, so I'm
| very happy to pay the small amount
| szszrk wrote:
| A paid telegram would be crippled from large part userbase. I
| would not be able to convince anyone from friends and family to
| use it if it were paid - they can't see the value before
| installing.
|
| Without them I would not pay for it as well.
| chii wrote:
| it's quite "easy" to solve that problem - you as the person
| who wants to convince others to use, would pay up front for
| the app for them.
|
| To the family member, it's free (of course, you do tell them
| you're paying). But when they find that it's good, they would
| also pay to recommend it to their friends.
| tw04 wrote:
| I don't see that as being a hurdle. You make the first year
| free which, IIRC, is what whatsapp did.
| hobofan wrote:
| It would make it a hurdle for the young userbase. When I
| started using Whatsapp I was ~16, and didn't have access to
| a credit card or any other way to pay for a yearly
| subscription (and I'm not sure if my parents would have
| okayed it).
| curryst wrote:
| I would imagine that it's, in part, because they want to allow
| anonymous communication for political dissidents and the like.
| It's hard to make an app that is resistant to nation state
| level spying. It's that much harder to implement an anonymous
| payment system on top of that.
|
| I know Bitcoin and the like exist, but you're vastly increasing
| the attack surface to identify someone.
| user-the-name wrote:
| How much do you think they could charge, and what percentage of
| their users do you think would pay that?
| batiudrami wrote:
| The #1 thing holding people back from changing to Telegram or
| Signal is network effects and you want to add a paywall?
|
| I would pay for a good messaging app, but most people wouldn't,
| and a messaging app most people don't use is a bad messaging
| app.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I don't think subscriptions work for every product.
|
| In the case of something ubiquitous like a messaging app, I
| think ads scale better than subscriptions.
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| Pavel clearly has a social agenda behind Telegram. He wants to
| provide access to independent uncensored communication platform
| to everyone for free.
|
| So looks like ads is the only other option left for now.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Today ads never come without tracking. This is the problem.
| And even without tracking ads are a kind of garbage I don't
| want anyway. So, the day I get ads in Telegram I'm leaving.
| At the same time I wouldn't mind a reasonable (~1$/month, I
| don't do anything heavy, text messaging only) subscription.
| jamesrr39 wrote:
| I'm not sure about this, if anything there seems to have
| been a few services recently (e.g. DuckDuckGo, Qwant) that
| are supported by ads (presumably with metrics on ad
| performance for advertisers) but without following you
| around the internet. They seem to be doing ok as
| businesses, and it seems a reasonable compromise to me.
|
| I'm curious about how Telegram will decide what ads to
| show, how heavily it will try and personalize them; will
| the ads be relevant to the channel you are in or follow you
| around Telegram.
|
| FWIW, personally, I like the idea of a choice of ads or
| paid subscription best.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| Charging for everyone will hamper network effects, chraging for
| poweruser features should still be fine. The should charge for
| the things that are actually costing them the money, like long
| term storage of big files
| Waterluvian wrote:
| These startup social apps that run on a loss are heavily,
| intensely focused on user count as a KPI.
|
| I wonder if that leads to them balking at the reality that once
| you start charging money you'll lose a % of your users (which
| should be normal and fine!)
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| > which should be normal and fine!
|
| It shouldn't be normal and fine, because a large part of the
| value derived from social apps is the network of people using
| the app.
|
| Charging money means adding friction, which will mean a lot
| less people use the app and thus it's value is significantly
| reduced.
| Huwyt_Nashi031 wrote:
| While I would be happy to pay for it in principle, the value of
| Telegram to me is that is has provided a platform for many
| political dissidents - individuals and groups - who might
| otherwise be persecuted for their beliefs and activism, and
| denied a platform for learning and discussion.
|
| I could be wrong but I believe this is a popular reason for
| Telegram's appeal.
|
| How many of those would be comfortable trusting Telegram with
| payment details, rather than just a pseudonym?
| tw04 wrote:
| I'm not sure why that would be a problem. Telegram could
| easily make bitcoin and/or cash a payment option like
| countless VPN providers have. No "real info" necessary.
| corobo wrote:
| Especially when there's Telegram groups that are charging
| $10/mo to get into haha.
|
| Advertising and privacy don't mix.
|
| e: I was wrong, it's $20/mo (wip.co)
| fsflover wrote:
| > Advertising and privacy don't mix.
|
| _Targeted_ advertising and privacy don 't mix. Context-based
| advertising is fine for the privacy. But it may not be fine
| if you don't like to be manipulated.
| corobo wrote:
| How do they track views, clicks and payouts?
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| You don't, ideally.
|
| One of the great -- although I suspect inevitable -- sins
| of the early web was the "innovation" of tracking clicks
| on advertising. Ads had been around for over a century
| before that in other media, and the only real measure of
| success available to advertisers was "when I spend money
| on ads in this [magazine, newspaper, TV show, radio spot,
| billboard, ...], sales appear to go up by this amount,
| compared to spending money on [other thing]." Selling ads
| based on the notion that the only effective web
| advertisement is the one that makes the viewer _stop
| reading that article, right now, and drop everything to
| CLICK! RIGHT! THIS! MOMENT!_ was, in the light of all
| previous advertising history, absolutely bonkers.
| hardtke wrote:
| The Whatsapp route is to get purchased by and subsidized by
| Facebook. There is no chance the antitrust authorities in the
| US and Europe will allow something like that to happen again.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Archive link (no paywall): https://archive.is/OcmnY
| Scandiravian wrote:
| This is the way
|
| Thank you!
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/OcmnY
| indymike wrote:
| I'd be more than happy to pay for Telegram service for my family
| and I. I'm tired of depending on ad supported software where my
| input as a user is out of alignment with the paying customer.
| Better to be both user and customer.
| smachiz wrote:
| Doesn't mean you don't end up the product anyway.
|
| Which is the real rub. Paying for a product is no guarantee
| that your data won't be misused anyway. It's incremental money
| for the taking for any enterprise.
| dannote wrote:
| Telegram Group have sold $1B in convertibles today:
|
| https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
| fsflover wrote:
| This will happen with any sufficiently popular walled garden. I
| am looking at you Signal. Consider distributed Matrix instead.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| What is the benefit of Telegram over other platforms like Signal?
| I haven't been on it in awhile but was quite turned off by all
| the "HODL!" channels that it seemed to be filled with at the
| time.
| dont__panic wrote:
| A lot of folks like Telegram's UX for private messages and
| group chats. I've been using it to talk to my friends for years
| and have no idea about any of the "social" channels. Personally
| I'd say that's probably not the best thing to to evaluate a
| messenger client based on -- particularly since Signal
| completely fails at that criteria since it literally doesn't
| have any social channels at all.
| Aachen wrote:
| I don't have a single chat like that. Like, if you don't want
| that, don't join cryptocurrency / investment groups?
|
| As for the other question, what dont__panic said also goes for
| me. I'm trying to switch to Signal but it's such a drag
| compared to tg, the UX is so bad (and it's the best among
| encrypted messengers that I've found) it's hard to convince
| even myself let alone whole groups.
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