Six months after the introduction of Telegram Premium, the creator of the messaging app has summed up: the balance of this feature is clearly positive.
Introduced June 19, 2022, the paid version of the app has in fact convinced almost a million people, obtaining a result on which Pavel Durov himself, creator of the program, expressed his opinion, claiming that it "exceeded our expectations" arriving to define this goal as "one of the most successful social subscription plans ever seen ”.
Obviously, although the result obtained is undeniably positive, the Premium version contributes only a minimal part to the company's revenues: at present there are over seven hundred to millions of users using Telegram. Furthermore, the amount requested to access the premium version is not particularly high (from 5.99 euros per month in Italy, going from around 5 dollars/month in the United States to just over 2 dollars/month in India).
And it was Durov himself who argued that this is the first step towards further growth of Telegram in 2023 and that the revenues will make it possible to further improve the company and the user experience of its product; in this regard, the founder of Telegram expressed himself as follows:
“ Thanks to the success of monetization, Telegram will be able to pay for servers, traffic and salaries and thus be able to continue developing new features and support those existing. While other apps view their users as a way to maximize revenue, we view revenue as a way to deliver more value to users.”
And it is undeniable that in the course of its almost ten years of life, the number two app for users in the world (surpassed only by whatsapp) has introduced numerous innovations and changes and enjoys an enviable customization capacity (to such In this regard, we remind you of our article on how to make the most of the potential of Telegram ). However, Durov's "little" creature requires a considerable expenditure of money to continue living: the Wall Street Journal states that, in order to remain in business, the company had to issue debt estimated at between one billion and one and a half billion dollars .
It is therefore no coincidence that Telegram has started testing the introduction, in non-premium accounts, of short advertising texts, about 160 characters long. Announcements that, at least according to the results of the first tests, would have obtained a positive response.