How does Telegram make money?
Subscribe to Xataka Móvil
Receive an email a day with our articles:
Maintaining a cloud-based service with virtually unlimited space and file uploads up to 2 GB costs money. And yet, Telegram is free, it has no ads and no extra features for which they ask for money or companies. So how does Telegram make money?
The quickest answer to that question is that Telegram doesn't make money, although there are some nuances. While this has been the position since its inception, plans for 2021 involve the start of Telegram monetization.
Where Telegram's money comes from
This year it exceeded 500 million active users. Active users whose chats are stored forever on their servers, with all photos, videos and files. The recent example of Google Photos gives us an idea that maintaining the infrastructure for this ever increasing demand for storage costs a lot of money. However, there is no limit for users beyond the 2 GB maximum size per file.
That, without counting the salaries of the 334 employees that the company has, in addition to various fixed costs, such as offices. Many expenses without asking for anything in return from users or companies. Although the application recently released its payment platform, it does not charge any commission for its use. As of today there are no ads or limited features that require a payment or subscription.
The solution to this enigma comes from investments, whose figure is estimated at about 1,700 million dollars in total. The company itself explained the situation in its recent questions in this way, until the text was recently changed after the latest monetization announcements:
In other words, until now Telegram survives on donations and Pavel Durov himself confirmed in a post on his Telegram channel that the company's expenses have come from his savings for most of the application's history. However, with 500 million users and the sights set on reaching the billion, it was time to start earning money to cover expenses or sell the company.
Monetization is coming down
The good news is that Pavel Durov has no intention of selling Telegram, but the plan is to monetize the app during 2021 "according to the values and promises made during the last 7 years". The idea is to do it in a non-intrusive way, so that most users "barely notice any changes".
The promise is that everything that is free today will remain free, but special features will be introduced for companies and advanced users that will be paid. What functions they will be is yet to be seen, but it is possible that in the future we will see something similar to WhatsApp Business, but on Telegram. Or a Telegram Pro, with advanced features.
On the other hand, ads will arrive, but not in private chats. The idea is to create an advertising platform for channels, to replace the ads that are shown today and often do not differ much from normal publications. These ads will not be personalized to user profiles, but will be contextual based on the theme of the channel in question. In addition, Durov clarified that users will be able to opt out of receiving ads.
Other monetization systems for channels that Telegram is working on are donations and subscriptions. In addition, another possibility on the table is the introduction of premium stickers, something that has worked very well, for example, in LINE.
These are all ways to make money that Telegram is exploring for 2021, but not yet ready at the time of writing. To this day, the answer to how Telegram makes money is that it does not make money. At least for now.
Share How does Telegram make money?
Share
