Telegram, Nearing 500 Million Users, To Begin Monetization (techcrunch.com) 54
Instant messaging app Telegram is "approaching" 500 million users and plans to generate revenue starting next year to keep the business afloat, its founder Pavel Durov said on Wednesday. From a report: 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.
"Monetization" (Score:2)
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Re: "Monetization" (Score:1)
The dear innocence of childhood (Score:2)
> the government ... only motivation will be to serve people.
That's adorable. The politicians only motivation is to serve people. It would be interesting to have lunch with you and chat some time before you lose your innocence.
Also, apparently the federal government does a great job actually running things. Such a great job that every year they shut down or nearly so because they are unable to make a budget; apparently they missed that week in seventh grade and didn't learn how.
Re:"Monetization" (Score:4, Informative)
As soon as the ads start everyone will jump to the next free option.
Re:"Monetization" (Score:5, Insightful)
As soon as the ads start everyone will jump to the next free option.
Just like everyone stopped using Google, YouTube, and Facebook?
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It's easy to block ads on the web. Not so much in apps.
Different apps (Score:2)
But an IM client? Yeah, those are a dime a dozen. Low barrier to entry means there's too many to buy. You don't care that all your
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Just like everyone started blocking ads on Google, YouTube, and Facebook.
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Wow, where is the world going?
Now also you stopped reading summaries?
The ADs are for *channels*
Ordinary users wont see ADs.
Re: "Monetization" (Score:2)
Signal is a proper noun, it should have a capital S.
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My recommendation (Score:2)
Eat garlic, it will make you taste bad. A final F U to your eater.
Hmm. (Score:3)
"A project of our size needs at least a few hundred million dollars per year to keep going,"
That's why it's a "project" and not a "business". One is a money pit. The other is (supposed to be) self sustainable and *gasp* profitable.
Hundreds of millions? (Score:1)
I'm wondering where the HELL he's spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
It would take a pretty talented programmer to code it to run well on a single pair of 8-core servers with four NVMe drives each, and a pair of archive servers. Less talented programmers would need more than those four servers. Smart programmers would put a four-some of servers in different regions, so maybe 16 servers total for an ideal implementation. That's maybe $16K / year. I'd cost him $180,000 to build and run the
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I'm wondering where the HELL he's spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
It would take a pretty talented programmer to code it to run well on a single pair of 8-core servers with four NVMe drives each, and a pair of archive servers. Less talented programmers would need more than those four servers. Smart programmers would put a four-some of servers in different regions, so maybe 16 servers total for an ideal implementation. That's maybe $16K / year. I'd cost him $180,000 to build and run the thing. So $200K to keep it running.
Where the F is he spending the other couple hundred million? Tech support must be a big cost, but a couple hundred million?
My guess for some of it - really, really bad programming and sysadmin which ends up with a hundred times as many servers as needed if it were done well, and because it's done poorly they are constantly breaking.
They hired the architect mentioned in this post (Yes, I read reddit too, so what?).
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I'm wondering where the HELL he's spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
It would take a pretty talented programmer to code it to run well on a single pair of 8-core servers with four NVMe drives each, and a pair of archive servers. Less talented programmers would need more than those four servers. Smart programmers would put a four-some of servers in different regions, so maybe 16 servers total for an ideal implementation. That's maybe $16K / year. I'd cost him $180,000 to build and run the thing. So $200K to keep it running.
Where the F is he spending the other couple hundred million? Tech support must be a big cost, but a couple hundred million?
My guess for some of it - really, really bad programming and sysadmin which ends up with a hundred times as many servers as needed if it were done well, and because it's done poorly they are constantly breaking.
Whoops, forgot to post the link: This architect! [reddit.com]
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That was pretty good.
Just don't start reading /idontworkherelady and /prorevenge
You'll be up all night because you can't put it down.
Get the users then seek rent (Score:1)
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The only business model that works in that space is to get big, then get bought out by Google, Facebook, Microsoft or another one of the gigantic monopolies that plague the internet.
Apparently Telegram didn't achieve that.
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Apparently Telegram didn't achieve that.
And likely never will. That window of opportunity is closed. The FAANGs are now seen as "too big" and the Feds are looking to break them up or at least hobble them. So no more big acquisitions are likely to be approved.
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The time tested strategy. Which dosen’t work when you’re easily replaceable.
They aren't. Just the opposite. They are THE REPLACEMENT.
1. All the features of Twitter and a lot of features of Whatsapp integrated into a single package and with configurable social aspects. If you want likes, you turn it on (I have seen only idiots like Trump do it). If you don't you don't. You want it private, you have it private. You want it public, you have it public. No stupid size limits, no stupid post limits, etc.
2. Rate limits for commenting, etc.
3. Video support Twtitter can only dream of.
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Greedy ads will make it as obnoxious as Facebook, Instagram, etc.
However, most people will just keep using it. Just look at Youtube. It has become an extremely obnoxious ad platform infested with greedy ads and people still keep watching.
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Advertising... why did it have to be advertising? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does it have to be advertising (which means surveillance and irritation)?
Why not charge $1/year like Whatsapp did?
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A sensible question. It may sound like a lot with a quote like "the service needs hundreds of millions to function" but if they truly have 500 millon users, even $1/year is plenty.
I have no data to back it up, but my guess is less people will leave the service if advertising starts than if they are prevented from using the service until they set up a $1 yearly recurring payment. Not that they would be upset with the price, just they wouldn't take the effort to set it up and would start using other apps more instead.
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I long for a broad move away from the free ad and data selling and freemium business models to one where companies simply price the widgets and services offered in line with their costs and profit goals. If all just did this, people would again pay with money, and we'd not have the downsides of ads and privacy concerns. Plus, the steps that people continue to employ such as ad blocking will not lead to yet more company failures. Just charge me the true cost and sell something worth paying for. I imagine
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Why does it have to be advertising (which means surveillance and irritation)?
Why would it have to include surveillance? On the user side, put a couple of tick boxes in the user settings that say "I want only these categories of adverts, choose three minimum." On the advertiser side, put "I want to reach people who picked these options." There's no need for the advertisers to know *who* chose to see that particular category, only that Telegram routes it to people who said "I"m OK with seeing this type of stuff."
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Why would it have to include surveillance?
Because targeted ads are way more profitable than untargeted ads.
On the user side, put a couple of tick boxes in the user settings that say "I want only these categories of adverts, choose three minimum."
That is a great idea in theory. I would love to be able to just tell advertisers what my interests are rather than having them infer it from my browsing. But, so far, it hasn't worked in practice.
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Because targeted ads are way more profitable than untargeted ads.
That is what the AD platforms claim.
And obviously it is wrong.
I rarely ever get an ad that is remotely relevant for me.
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Most people don't understand (or don't care) that if you're not paying directly they're getting money from you in some other way (usually ads or by monetizing your data). That's why I was very happy paying a bit for Whatsapp. When it was made 'free' most of my friends were very happy. I wasn't, because it now meant that they we gonna monetize my data. They didn't care.
Because nobody's gonna pay for it (Score:2)
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WhatsApp did not actually charge that.
On iPhone it never did and on Android it was so easy to get around it that I know no one who ever paid.
500 Million Users (Score:5, Insightful)
Telegram, Nearing 500 Million Users, To Begin Monetization
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.
500 million users x $1 per year sub fee = $500 million
Even if charging $1 per year means losing half their users, they'd still be getting "a few hundred million dollars per year"... which should be enough to "keep going"
That's better than running ads, IMO.
Or give users both options and let them choose.
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Or give users both options and let them choose.
This is the magic option that's often missing. Most services are either ads only, or subscription only (for some reason).
If anything, they charge a subscription, but run ads anyway, and try to justify it by telling you the ads merely "subsidize" the subscription so it costs less.
Hundreds of millions / year? (Score:1)
Really? What fucking idiot builds a service that costs that much?
I think there's a lot of bullshit there for a start. Either that or the company behind it is completely incompetent and using cash to wipe their butts or some other inefficient use, which would be a warning sign for anyone else to stay the fuck away.
Even with 500 million users, (which in computing terms is pretty paltry), you probably only need a few million a year. Hundreds of millions? Bullshit.
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If you think all that is needed is to connect two device ip/ports in order to send an encrypted SMS to another device asynchronously in a timely manner, you really don't understand what's going on. Here's a data point: if the average user sends 53 messages a day (https://www.textrequest.com/blog/how-many-texts-people-send-per-day/) and you have 500 million users, that will cost nearly 5 million in just in push notifications (https://aws.amazon.com/sns/pricing/).
And it will cost a 10th of that if you don't use AWS. Maybe that's why Telegram needs so much money for operations - they run it on AWS.
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I think he's like the guy who inflates the value of his house and car because he thinks it makes him more attractive. "I can pay hundreds of millions of dollars out of my pocket to support this project." That would attract gold diggers like flies.
A hundred million? For a chat app?? (Score:1)
> "A project of our size needs at least a few hundred million dollars per year to keep going," he said.
You can serve 500 million users off a couple dozen decent-sized servers. And it's a chat app, not streaming video, so you don't even need much bandwidth. They will *never* all be online at the same time, though, so you only need a fraction of that.
You do have to host in lots of regions to make it global, though, so that slightly increases your cost. Doing business in a lot of different regions (ex. Chin
I can't help it (Score:2)
Okay, I'm old. But when I see "Telegram" I immediately think of this old Saturday Night Live skit [youtube.com].