Telegram founder Pavel Durov has announced that the instant messaging application will be offering a new premium membership on its platform. This new membership hasn’t been launched officially. However, it will be going live this month, the founder of the company confirmed. Also Read - Telegram now allows you to send crypto payments to other users: Here are the details
On his Telegram channel, Pavel Durov explained the rationale behind this new move. He also gives us a glimpse of what to expect in terms of features from the new premium membership. Also Read - Telegram gets custom mute durations, more animated emojis, improved message translation and more
Durov claimed that many users have been asking him to “raise the current limits” of the application. In order to do so, the founder claims that they tried different ways. However, the issue is that in order to remove limits for everyone, the servers and traffic couldn’t function and costs would’ve been unmanageable. Also Read - WhatsApp Communities feature announced: A Group for WhatsApp Groups
Durov said, “Many have been asking us to raise the current limits even further, 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.”
Why a Paid Subscription?
He claimed that to overcome this issue they will have to include a paid subscription to provide a “no-limits” experience. In his statement, he said, “After giving it some thought, we realized that the only way to let most demanding fans get more while keeping our existing features free is to make those raised limits a paid option. That’s why this month we will introduce Telegram Premium, a subscription plan that allows anyone to acquire additional features, speed, and resources. It will also allow users to support Telegram and join the club that receives new features first.”
New Premium Features
Durov assured existing members that the subscription won’t hamper the free services. The current features will continue to be free of cost. He even claimed that free members will also benefit from the new paid membership, at least indirectly. The free subscription members will be able to access extra-large documents, media, and stickers sent by Premium users, or tap to add Premium reactions already pinned to a message to react in the same way.
Durov claimed that while the company has been testing ads in public channels and they have been more successful than expected, the company believes the app should be funded by the users and not the advertisers.
