Telegram Premium, the paid version of the end-to-end chat app has amassed more than 1 million users since it was rolled out about six months ago. Telegram Premium was the company’s first real attempt at monetizing its services; and 1 million paid subscribers in less than six months of its launch is not a poor start.
Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram announced the landmark achievement this week via his channel. In his exact words, Durov described the latest milestone as “one of the most successful examples of a social media subscription plan ever launched.”
Despite the achievement, the 1 million subscription only “represents just a fraction of Telegram’s overall revenue,” Durov said via his Telegram channel. The company hopes to have its subscription plan match its ads revenue in the near future.
“Thanks to successful monetization, Telegram will be able to pay for the servers, traffic and wages necessary to keep building new features and supporting existing ones. While some other apps consider their users a tool to maximize revenue, we consider revenue a tool to maximize value for our users,” Durov wrote in his channel per TechCrunch.
Last month, Telegram rolled out some handy new features for both paid and free users. Premium users will now have access to transmission of video messages.
Previously, the feature was only limited to voice messages, but will now be available on videos as well. Sometimes, you find yourself a noisy environment where you can barely grab the audio of the clip. With video transcription, however, that should not be a problem anymore.
Telegram also rolled out ‘Topics,’ a new feature that helps some of the issues bothering groups with lots of members. Groups with over 200 members can toggle Topics to set aside a portion of the group for a topic you are interested in.
Text resizing is another new feature launched by Telegram. When it is enabled, you can easily adjust the size of your texts across replies, headers, and previews.
A couple of minor design changes have also been effected by Telegram. Some of these changes include, animated placeholders when waiting for messages to load, and a new animation when swiping left to reply within a chat.
