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Telegram's popularity depends on a vibrant ecosystem of third-party clients and bots that run on their API, and they wouldn't want to risk losing that. On the o

Telegram's popularity depends on a vibrant ecosystem of third-party clients and bots that run on their API, and they wouldn't want to risk losing that. On the other hand, WhatsApp has prohibited third-party clients since 2015 and restricts their API to businesses that they are now charging these new rates. Telegram is the more consumer-friendly choice, partly because they have not entrenched their market position in the same way that WhatsApp has.

noobermin 5y ago
Until they will? At the end of the day, how else will chat apps make money? Fundamentally, as long as it's one central service run by one company they'll have to make money by eventually milking their users once they have the marketshare. Whatsapp said they'd do it forever and now they are.
- commoner 5y ago
  The CEO and co-founder of Telegram made a statement on monetization last year:* https://t.me/durov/142 https://t.me/durov/142 These parts highlight the strategy: > 4. All the features that are currently free will stay free. We will add some new features for business teams or power users. Some of these features will require more resources and will be paid for by these premium users. Regular users will be able to keep enjoying Telegram – for free, forever. > 5. All parts of Telegram devoted to messaging will remain ad-free. We think that displaying ads in private 1-to-1 chats or group chats is a bad idea. Communication between people should be free of advertising of any sort. > 6. In addition to its messaging component, Telegram has a social networking dimension. Our massive public one-to-many channels can have millions of subscribers each and are more like Twitter feeds. In many markets the owners of such channels display ads to earn money, sometimes using third-party ad platforms. The ads they post look like regular messages, and are often intrusive. We will fix this by introducing our own Ad Platform for public one-to-many channels – one that is user-friendly, respects privacy and allows us to cover the costs of servers and traffic. If you accept the co-founder's statement, Telegram is only going to monetize one-to-many communications, and not charge fees for one-to-one conversations (in contrast to WhatsApp). Telegram is privately held, not publicly traded, and has no obligation to prioritize profit maximization over their mission. * The statement is linked from their FAQ: https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-are-you-going-to-make-money-out-of-this https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-are-you-going-to-make-money-o...
  - noobermin 5y ago
    Look, I use telegram ever since whatsapp went down this road and I'm generally supportive of them. I will just say private vs public is better as long as the guy (it's almost always a guy) is a "good guy" and not a "bad guy." Relying on One Person is not always a safe bet because One Person can die or want to move on and then we're back to the coin flip as to whether it's "good guy" or "bad guy." Generally, my preference is an open protocol because protocols can't be controlled by one person and they can't (eventually) be bought. For now, I support Telegram but the future has to be protocols for the sake of free and open communication. Of course, the downside is no one makes money off of that, or at least they don't as much just selling a server running a protocol everyone else can run. Or even worse for them, they can't exert as much control.
    - commoner 5y ago
      I agree 100%. I hope that Matrix will eventually succeed both WhatsApp and Telegram, since it is decentralized and fully free and open source on both the client and server sides.
VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
> [Twitter's] popularity depends on a vibrant ecosystem of third-party clients and bots that run on their API, and they wouldn't want to risk losing that. The reality is that nobody is paying a subscription to use a chat app. So they have to monetize the same way as always: ads and company bots. And that's at odds with the third-party ecosystem where they'll just block the ads and the company bots. This is just the same thing as always. It just hasn't been ruined yet.

noobermin 5y ago

Until they will? At the end of the day, how else will chat apps make money? Fundamentally, as long as it's one central service run by one company they'll have to make money by eventually milking their users once they have the marketshare. Whatsapp said they'd do it forever and now they are.

commoner 5y ago
The CEO and co-founder of Telegram made a statement on monetization last year:* https://t.me/durov/142 https://t.me/durov/142 These parts highlight the strategy: > 4. All the features that are currently free will stay free. We will add some new features for business teams or power users. Some of these features will require more resources and will be paid for by these premium users. Regular users will be able to keep enjoying Telegram – for free, forever. > 5. All parts of Telegram devoted to messaging will remain ad-free. We think that displaying ads in private 1-to-1 chats or group chats is a bad idea. Communication between people should be free of advertising of any sort. > 6. In addition to its messaging component, Telegram has a social networking dimension. Our massive public one-to-many channels can have millions of subscribers each and are more like Twitter feeds. In many markets the owners of such channels display ads to earn money, sometimes using third-party ad platforms. The ads they post look like regular messages, and are often intrusive. We will fix this by introducing our own Ad Platform for public one-to-many channels – one that is user-friendly, respects privacy and allows us to cover the costs of servers and traffic. If you accept the co-founder's statement, Telegram is only going to monetize one-to-many communications, and not charge fees for one-to-one conversations (in contrast to WhatsApp). Telegram is privately held, not publicly traded, and has no obligation to prioritize profit maximization over their mission. * The statement is linked from their FAQ: https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-are-you-going-to-make-money-out-of-this https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-are-you-going-to-make-money-o...
- noobermin 5y ago
  Look, I use telegram ever since whatsapp went down this road and I'm generally supportive of them. I will just say private vs public is better as long as the guy (it's almost always a guy) is a "good guy" and not a "bad guy." Relying on One Person is not always a safe bet because One Person can die or want to move on and then we're back to the coin flip as to whether it's "good guy" or "bad guy." Generally, my preference is an open protocol because protocols can't be controlled by one person and they can't (eventually) be bought. For now, I support Telegram but the future has to be protocols for the sake of free and open communication. Of course, the downside is no one makes money off of that, or at least they don't as much just selling a server running a protocol everyone else can run. Or even worse for them, they can't exert as much control.
  - commoner 5y ago
    I agree 100%. I hope that Matrix will eventually succeed both WhatsApp and Telegram, since it is decentralized and fully free and open source on both the client and server sides.

VWWHFSfQ 5y ago

> [Twitter's] popularity depends on a vibrant ecosystem of third-party clients and bots that run on their API, and they wouldn't want to risk losing that. The reality is that nobody is paying a subscription to use a chat app. So they have to monetize the same way as always: ads and company bots. And that's at odds with the third-party ecosystem where they'll just block the ads and the company bots. This is just the same thing as always. It just hasn't been ruined yet.