Messenger Telegram wants to introduce a payment model in view of its rapid growth. All currently free functions remain free, as Telegram founder Pawel Durow announced. However, there will be new functions for which users will then be asked to pay.

On advertisements to finance the service, which are displayed when reading Durow wants to continue to do without news. “Communication between people should be free from advertising of any kind,” he writes. According to him, Telegram is now used by 500 millions of active users. The service was founded 2013 and was initially popular with opposition activists in authoritarian countries because of its encryption, but has recently become the focus of German authorities because of questionable groups and criminal activities devices.

“We won’t sell the company like the founders of WhatsApp,” says Durow. “The world needs Telegram to stay independent.” And to ensure that, the service must generate income from the coming year. “We will introduce innumerable new functions and welcome billions of new users,” says the founder. The 36 – year old is considered the Russian Mark Zuckerberg. However, Durow lives abroad for fear of political persecution. He also founded the social network Vkontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook. In contrast to Facebook, there is even less control of the content there, which is why the platform is said to be popular with neo-Nazis, among others. Russian authorities have full access to Vkontakte.

Language areas at Telegram A new function for group voice chats is immediately available at Telegram, similar to a Discord room that runs continuously. You can then simply click in and out. The language rooms should also work for groups with several thousand participants. In the mobile app, a corresponding button appears within the group as soon as the update has been downloaded. A push-to-talk option is available on the desktop. The voice chats will soon be expanded to include video. Group admins must enable the function. “Voice chats are not group calls, but can achieve similar goals and are much more flexible than group calls with classic scheduling,” writes Telegram in the blog post.

Of course there are also more animations and animated emojis that can also be loaded faster. “If you are still using iOS, you can allow Siri to read incoming messages over your headphones,” it says with a swipe at Apple. (With material from dpa) / (emw)