TELEGRAM APP TO LAUNCH PAY-FOR SERVICES IN 2021 WITH COUNTLESS NEW FEATURES

Thu 24 December 2020:

Encrypted messaging app Telegram will launch pay-for services in 2021, its Russian-born founder Pavel Durov said Wednesday, as the growing company needed “at least a few hundred million dollars per year”.

“Telegram will begin to generate revenue, starting next year,” Durov said in a statement.

“We will be able to launch countless new features and welcome billions of new users.”

Durov, 36, said he did not plan to sell the company and therefore needed to look for other ways to come up with funding.

Durov said he has personally bankrolled the seven-year-old business so far, but as the startup scales he is looking for ways to monetize the instant messaging service. “A project of our size needs at least a few hundred million dollars per year to keep going,” he said.

The service, which topped 400 million active users in April this year, will introduce its own ad platform for public one-to-many channels — “one that is user-friendly, respects privacy and allows us to cover the costs of server and traffic,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.

“If we monetize large public one-to-many channels via the Ad Platform, the owners of these channels will receive free traffic in proportion to their size,” he wrote. Another way Telegram could monetize its service is through premium stickers with “additional expressive features,” he wrote. “The artists who make stickers of this new type will also get a part of the profit. We want millions of Telegram-based creators and small businesses to thrive, enriching the experience of all our users.”

Telegram is a popular social media platform in a number of countries, particularly in the former Soviet Union and Iran, and is used both for private communications and sharing information and news.

It has attracted nearly 500 million active users since its launch by Durov and his brother Nikolai in 2013.

“For most of Telegram’s history, I paid for the expenses of the company from my personal savings,” Durov said.

“However, with its current growth Telegram is on track to reach billions of users and to require appropriate funding.”