Last month a rumor started spreading across the internet about Telegram wanting to launch a paid tier, and today the company’s founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, has confirmed that this is in fact happening.
Telegram Premium, as it will be known, is launching before the end of the month. Before you start worrying, however, note that all the current features that are free will remain free. Not just that, but there are new features coming to the free tier in the future too.
Telegram Premium will allow “anyone to acquire additional features, speed and resources”, Durov says. It will also “allow users to support Telegram and join the club that receives new features first”. Even users who don’t subscribe to Telegram Premium will be able to indirectly enjoy some of its benefits, like viewing extra-large documents, media and stickers sent by Premium users, or tapping to add Premium reactions already pinned to a message to react in the same way.
Durov ends his announcement, which he befittingly posted on Telegram of course, by revealing that the company’s ad experiments in public channels have been more successful than they were expecting, but even with that being the case, he thinks the service should be primarily funded by its users, not advertisers, to ensure that the users remain its main priority going forward.
