Telegram has introduced a paid subscription plan: who’s affected, and do you have to be involved?

Last Friday (June 10), Telegram introduced that it might launch a paid subscription plan for customers later this month. The paid subscription plan would permit customers to have a better restrict for chats, media, and file uploads.

The messaging app has greater than half a billion month-to-month energetic customers, and counts Meta’s WhatsApp as a competitor.

The paid subscription plan would permit customers to have a better restrict for chats, media, and file uploads, in accordance with CEO Pavel Durov.

“Many have been asking us to raise the current limits (on chats, media, and file uploads), so we looked into ways to let you go beyond what is already crazy. The problem here is that if we were to remove all limits for everyone, our server and traffic costs would have become unmanageable, so the party would be unfortunately over for everyone,” stated Telegram CEO Pavel Durov.

After some consideration, the paid subscription plans have been the one option to let customers get extra options, whereas holding the present ones nonetheless free, he added.

The subscription plans are completely non-obligatory and permit customers to assist Telegram. However, current options will stay free and Durov has additionally promised that “plenty of new free features” are coming.

Telegram has beforehand launched sponsored messages as a type of promoting. These messages are displayed in massive public one-to-many channels, and no person knowledge is mined or analysed to show adverts. 

That being stated, Durov has defended the transfer with an enchantment to his imaginative and prescient for the applying to stay centered on its customers.

“While our experiments with privacy-focused ads in public one-to-many channels have been more successful than expected, I believe that Telegram should be funded primarily by its users, not advertisers. This way our users will always remain our main priority,” he stated.

End of an period? Not actually.

Understandably, the announcement has precipitated fairly the commotion. Many of us in Singapore use Telegram, and never only for chatting with associates — the applying hosts enterprise accounts, information broadcasts and extra.

The announcement of Telegram Premium and its subscription plans are more likely to have an effect on some customers, however is it going to be important? Probably not.

For one, there’s already no restrict on the variety of messages people can ship to one another. However, limits nonetheless exist when it comes to file sizes and what number of teams a single person can create in a single day.

Currently, the file dimension restrict is 2GB, which is adequate to ship a high-quality video that’s about half an hour in size.

The variety of individuals in broadcast teams like Vulcan Post’s is limitless, and channels additionally permit an infinite variety of subscribers.

With these limits, the query shouldn’t be how a lot we might be restricted by Telegram Premium’s subscription charges. Instead, it needs to be centered on who would require exceeding these limits regularly.

Of course, if Durov means that there are, as shoppers we’re not actually able to solid doubt on his assertion.

And for these of us who’re at present utilizing the Telegram without cost, Durov has already promised that there is not going to be any interruption of service. Effectively, those that have been utilizing Telegram with out exceeding its limits could have nothing to fret about and extra to stay up for, since Durov has additionally promised that some premium options may also be launched without cost.

No free lunch on the planet

As shoppers, we must also perceive that there isn’t a free lunch on the planet. Everything comes at a price and when one thing is marketed to us as free, we must also query if we’re certainly the patron or the product.

The most outstanding various to Telegram is WhatsApp, owned by social media large Meta. Meta’s community contains Instagram and Facebook, amongst others.

While WhatsApp and Facebook are free for customers, Meta in addition to Telegram, are finally nonetheless corporations and a base requirement for corporations is to cowl their working prices.

An estimated 15 billion Telegrams have been being delivered every day in 2016. Meanwhile, WhatsApp delivers round 100 billion messages every day.

These messages require servers, and these servers price cash. In addition, app builders additionally need to take care of buyer complaints, product improvement, and rather more.

Can we actually count on these corporations to supply these providers utterly freed from cost?

Therefore, is it actually unreasonable to count on that monetisation is a priority for these service suppliers, particularly as they proceed to work on the applying itself?

Of course, one might argue that WhatsApp is, as of now, free to make use of. Users will not be charged a charge for downloading WhatsApp, and there’s no restrict as to how a lot one makes use of the applying.

But we must also contemplate that WhatsApp is a part of Meta’s ecosystem, and this isn’t an ecosystem that prioritises our privateness.

Facebook tracks our each transfer on their host of websites, from who we work together with, to what we learn and watch. And WhatsApp, as a part of the ecosystem, has additionally been dragged onboard the system. This knowledge is then bought to corporations, who in flip submit focused ads on Facebook.

So once we say that WhatsApp is free, the fee is as an alternative paid utilizing our knowledge. WhatsApp collects knowledge about our buy historical past, fee info and promoting knowledge, whereas Telegram does not one of the above. 

And lest we neglect, earlier than Meta’s acquisition of WhatsApp, WhatsApp additionally price cash to make use of on the same subscription mannequin — besides that this was for nearly all customers moderately than for individuals who used the applying most.

So on the finish of the day, plainly Telegram continues to be giving us fairly the discount on the subject of selecting a messaging platform. Our knowledge continues to be protected with Telegram, and solely those who use the platform way over common customers can be paying for premium options.

This is probably going the fairest situation for many of us — those who use probably the most, contribute probably the most, and those that use the least, stay unaffected. And whereas there isn’t a free lunch on the planet, those who eat probably the most, not less than in Telegram’s paradigm, must also pay probably the most.

Featured Image Credit: South China Morning Post