The Goa Spotlight Just another WordPress site
O Telegram Premium came true about six months ago. And the messenger has a lot to celebrate: according to founder Pavel Durov, the subscription service has already surpassed the mark of 1 million users. With the success, the novelty of the Telegram serves as a foundation for the path that Twitter Blue still needs to tread.
The news came from the founder’s own channel.
This Tuesday (6), Durov reported that Premium surpassed the mark of one million subscribers. For him, the model is “one of the most successful examples of a social network subscription plan ever launched”.
According to Durov, monetization will help pay for the messenger’s servers, traffic and salaries. “While some other apps consider their users a tool to maximize revenue, we consider revenue a tool to maximize value for our users,” he added.
The first million arrived quickly. After all, the news was made official on June 10 by the boss of the messenger. Then the service was launched on the 19th of the same month, and now, on December 6th, it has over a million subscribers.
Even so, the idea did not catch on to many users.
Telegram Premium accounts for 0.14% of users
The campaign with monthly fees ranging from R$ 12.49 to R$ 24.90 is, in fact, helping and can provide news. But Telegram Premium captured a very small range of subscribers, considering the universe of 700 million users announced in June.
That is, the number of subscribers corresponds to 0.14% of active users.
Still, all money helps – and Durov made it clear that Telegram is “on a stable path towards financial sustainability”.
Especially when considering that Telegram Premium offers features that use a lot of processing, such as the tool to transcribe voice messages.
Subscribers are also entitled to faster downloads, further forcing the platform’s traffic.
Will Twitter Blue perform the same?
Success or not, Telegram offers an interesting approach.
In addition to Premium, which releases exclusive tools, Durov recalls that the messenger’s ads do not use personal data for targeting. This whole strategy is in line with one of the messenger’s key points: privacy.
However, this is not the only social network to go down the path of subscriptions to increase revenue.
Twitter participates in that list. Since Elon Musk took over, the company has bet many of its chips on Twitter Blue, a model that follows the same idea: offering special features for those who pay for it. You even earn a verification badge from chaos when contracting the service.
And here’s where the whole story comes in: Elon Musk said on Nov. 9 that Twitter Blue needed “a few tweaks” but that “generally speaking” it was “doing well.”
But it’s not what it seems. On November 11th, the New York Times noted that the service had 140,000 subscribers. Meanwhile, Twitter had around 240 million active users as of Q2 2022.
In short: 140,000 subscribers corresponds to 0.05% of Twitter users.
In the second quarter, the paying public also did not make up a very large slice of the company’s cash.
In all, the company received just $101 million from subscriptions and other services. Meanwhile, revenue from ads was $1.08 billion.
Meanwhile, Musk expects half of Twitter’s revenue to come from subscriptions. But there remains a question: is this possible?
By the way, in 2021, only 2% of YouTube users subscribed to Premium. And look, the offer is beyond necessary to have some peace of mind when watching videos.
