Telegram has long been considered an underdog in the communications services market.
But the start-up developed in Russia has long since become a giant itself.
According to Telegram, more than 500 million people communicate via the fast-growing messenger app, which puts the app in fourth place among messengers worldwide in terms of user numbers.
At the same time, Telegram is more than just a chat app and, with its public channels and groups, also resembles a social network.
But unlike the competition on the social media market, Telegram was completely free of advertising for a long time. While Facebook made millions of dollars a year with targeted advertisements, Telegram was previously financed from the fortune of its founder Pavel Durow. For a long time he had advertised his platform as an ad-free alternative to services like Facebook or WhatsApp. (Read more about the billionaire behind the messenger app here.)
Recently, however, there have also been advertisements in the public Telegram channels: "All the information that beginners need," says a Russian-language advertising contribution for a Telegram channel on blockchain and cryptocurrencies on Sunday, for example. Underneath the note in gray letters: »Sponsored«. Russian users have been reporting such advertisements since Sunday, but it was initially unclear whether there were already English-language or German advertisements on Telegram. Telegram left a request to this effect unanswered.
At the end of October, Telegram founder Pawel Durow announced its own advertising platform through which companies can book advertising postings.
The ads should not be shown in private chats or in groups, but only in public channels with more than a thousand members.
In addition, they are limited to 160 characters, and pictures and videos are not even possible as advertising postings.
Shampoo ads next to conspiracy theories?
Durow also promised that "no personal data will be used to display the advertisements." Which advertisements are played to whom would only depend on the topics of the channels in which the advertisement is shown.
"User privacy is of the utmost importance to Telegram," said Durow.
A clear swipe in the direction of Facebook, whose advertising business works so well because, data-driven, it serves a presumably particularly lucrative target group to the companies.
It remains to be seen whether Telegram can win enough advertising customers with its model.
Telegram is known to the general public in Germany above all as the platform on which conspiracy ideologues like Attila Hildmann can distribute their content largely unhindered.
The idea that in addition to his talk about the BRD-GmbH or the corona vaccination as a Jewish world conspiracy in Hildmann's public channel there are suddenly official advertisements for - let's say - shampoo or the latest trends in interior design, at least I find somewhat disconcerting.
If you don't want any advertising, you have to pay
Advertisers should be able to exclude special channels and topics if they wish. In addition, Telegram published an amazingly detailed list of what kind of ads should not be allowed. No weapons are allowed to be advertised, but neither are medical products, spam programs or potentially harmful computer tools, and forged documents are also not allowed. Surprisingly far-reaching restrictions in view of the fact that Telegram content was otherwise only moderated very cautiously and, for example, fake vaccination certificates were offered and sold via channels in the app.
On Saturday, Pawel Durow announced another new feature for this month to his more than 600,000 Telegram subscribers: Anyone who wants an absolutely advertising-free Telegram on public channels can pay for it. In the form of a “cheap subscription”, users could support the development of Telegram directly and at the same time deactivate advertisements in channels. At first Durov did not say how much that should cost. He is also thinking about whether channel operators should also be able to switch off certain advertisements for their own channel in return for payment.
Durow's announcements should also meet with interest in Bonn.
This is where the Federal Office of Justice sits, which Telegram now wants to use the Network Enforcement Act to take stronger action against criminal content.
When the authority made its action against Telegram public in the summer, one of the reasons in the best official German was: "The provider's intention to make a profit".
External links: three tips from other media
"How I became a sought-after vaccination certificate forger" (two minutes' reading)
Hanno Böck is an IT security researcher and journalist.
For “Golem.de” he wrote down why total strangers have been asking him by email for months to falsify a digital vaccination certificate.
“A Drone Tried to Disrupt the Power Grid.
It Won't Be the Last «(five minutes to read, English): In the summer, a drone pilot apparently tried to attack a facility in the US power grid, allegedly to paralyze the supply.
Who was behind the attack is still unknown, reports the US magazine Wired, which reconstructed the case.
»What's Harder to Find Than Microchips?
The Equipment That Makes Them «(eight minutes to read, English): The shortage of microchips keeps the global economy in suspense.
The "Wall Street Journal" met an entrepreneur who collects and sells outdated machines that can be used to make chips - and who has also long since felt the effects of the crisis.
Have a good week, stay safe.
Max Hoppenstedt
