The founder of the Telegram service, Pavel Durov, said that from 2021, the work of the messenger will begin to be monetized. He wrote about this in his Telegram channel.
"As Telegram approaches the mark of 500 million active users, many are asking: who will pay for this growth? After all, the more users, the more expenses for servers and traffic. And the support of projects of our scale costs hundreds of millions of dollars per hour. For most of Telegram's history, I paid the company's bills from personal savings. But at the current rate of growth, Telegram is on its way to billions of active users — and corresponding expenses. When a technology company grows to such a size, it has only two ways: start earning money to cover expenses, or sell to a major player," wrote Durov.
He noted that, first of all, they are not going to sell the company, because the world needs Telegram as an independent project that respects the rights of users and provides high-quality service. And secondly, Telegram will last a long time.
"To fulfill points 1 and 2, Telegram will start monetizing next year. At the same time, we will remain true to our values and guarantees that we have given in the past. Thanks to the achieved scale, we will be able to monetize Telegram unobtrusively - most users are unlikely to notice serious changes. All current Telegram services will remain free. In addition, we will offer additional functions for business teams and users with advanced needs. Some of these new functions will be resource-intensive and, as a result, will become paid. Ordinary users will always use Telegram for free," added Durov.
According to him, there will be no advertising in personal and group chats, as it is unacceptable for communication.
"In addition to messaging, Telegram has a social network component. Massive public Telegram channels, built on the principle of one-to-many broadcasting, can reach millions of subscribers and have little in common with traditional messaging. In many countries, the owners of such channels make money by showing ads to their subscribers, sometimes through third-party advertising platforms. The advertisements they publish look like ordinary messages and are often intrusive. In this regard, we will offer our own advertising platform for channels, which will provide users with comfort and privacy, and allow us to cover server and traffic costs," said the developer.
He noted that the monetization of Telegram should benefit not only them, but also the entire community. So, artists will be able to earn from paid stickers, and content creators and entrepreneurs will prosper in Telegram, enriching all users due to the improvement of the quality of the service.
"This is how we see Telegram's path. Thanks to him, we will be able to introduce many new features and welcome billions of new users over the coming decades. This approach will allow us to remain independent, preserve our values, and offer the world an example of a new type of technological company," Durov summarized.
