Product Management Confabulation
What Product Managers are talking about.
Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov said on his channel today that the company secured $330 million in investment through bond sales last week. Durov said that the offering was oversubscribed with favorable terms to the company. “This bond offering was oversubscribed, and we were delighted to have global funds of the highest caliber with […]
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Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov said on his channel today that the company secured $330 million in investment through bond sales last week. Durov said that the offering was oversubscribed with favorable terms to the company. “This bond offering was oversubscribed, and we were delighted to have global funds of the highest caliber with […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov said that the company expects to hit profitability next year with eyes on going public in the future. The chat app, which crossed 900 million users, is making “hundreds of millions of dollars” through ads and subscriptions, Durov told the Financial Times in an interview. He mentioned that while global investors […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Telegram has raised $210 million through bond sales this week from a number of investors, including its founder and chief executive Pavel Durov, as it navigates the slowing economy that has evaporated public markets’ appetite for listings.
The messaging app, used by over 800 million users each month, raised the capital by issuing bonds worth $270 million. “Because interest rates have gone up significantly since 2021, the bonds have a different issue price,” John Hyman, Telegram Chief Investment Adviser, told TechCrunch.
Telegram is still not profitable and the new financing is aimed at taking it closer to the “break-even” point, said Durov, claiming that his app was “closer to profitability in absolute numbers” than competitors including Twitter and Snap.
A set of “well-known funds with stellar reputations” purchased the bonds, Durov said without identifying them. Telegram’s Hyman told TechCrunch that these backers are “highly sophisticated global funds who specialise in bonds.”
Durov said in his post that he “personally bought” about a quarter of the new Telegram bonds, investing “tens of millions into Telegram’s growth.” Over the last 10 years, Durov said, he has spent hundreds of millions on the app to keep it operational.
Telegram has grown fast in recent years even as new social offerings continue to mushroom. The app has added over 300 million users in the past two and a half years and is attracting 2.5 million new signups each day.
For the Dubai-headquartered firm, improving the finances and becoming self-sufficient is the bigger challenge. Telegram — which has kickstarted its monetization engine in recent years, including launch of a subscription service — raised over $1 billion in debt financing by selling 5-year pre-IPO convertible bonds more than two years ago.
Telegram has been looking to go public for several years — it even tried a token sale (which was blocked by the SEC) — but the ongoing weakening global market condition means that it will have to continue to rely on private investors to bankroll its operations.
Several other social media startups, including Twitter, Discord and Reddit, have seen their valuations slashed by mutual fund investors after Meta and Snap shed tens of billions of dollars in value in the public market.
Telegram Premium has amassed over 1 million subscribers, less than six months after the popular instant messaging app launched the paid offering and began a serious effort to monetize the business.
Pavel Durov shared the update on his Telegram channel Tuesday, calling the milestone “one of the most successful examples of a social media subscription plan ever launched.”
The subscription, however, still “represents just a fraction of Telegram’s overall revenue,” he shared in the same update, optimistically hoping that one day Premium will rake in just as much money as ads.
The app, used by over 700 million monthly active users, launched Premium in late June, offering customers a range of additional features such as the ability to send files as large as 4 GB and faster downloads. The monthly subscription costs about $6 in the U.S. and the UK, and $2.2 in emerging markets such as India.
Telegram’s push to monetization comes at a time when its chief rival, WhatsApp, is also scrambling to find ways to make money. WhatsApp remains free and has no paid tier, but its parent firm Meta is increasingly bringing businesses to the instant messaging app. The firm appears to have dialled up its effort in recent months — and not everyone is happy about it.
The Dubai-headquartered Telegram, which has said in the past that it needed to make money to keep the platform afloat, citing computing costs, plans to expand its monetization efforts next year, Durov said. The firm is developing a host of decentralized tools, including non-custodial wallets and exchanges, he said late last month.
“Thanks to successful monetization, Telegram will be able to pay for the servers, traffic and wages necessary to keep building new features and supporting existing ones. While some other apps consider their users a tool to maximize revenue, we consider revenue a tool to maximize value for our users,” he wrote Tuesday.
Telegram Premium tops 1 million subscribers by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch
Telegram Premium has amassed over 1 million subscribers, less than six months after the popular instant messaging app launched the paid offering and began a serious effort to monetize the business.
Pavel Durov shared the update on his Telegram channel Tuesday, calling the milestone “one of the most successful examples of a social media subscription plan ever launched.”
The subscription, however, still “represents just a fraction of Telegram’s overall revenue,” he shared in the same update, optimistically hoping that one day Premium will rake in just as much money as ads.
The app, used by over 700 million monthly active users, launched Premium in late June, offering customers a range of additional features such as the ability to send files as large as 4 GB and faster downloads. The monthly subscription costs about $6 in the U.S. and the UK, and $2.2 in emerging markets such as India.
Telegram’s push to monetization comes at a time when its chief rival, WhatsApp, is also scrambling to find ways to make money. WhatsApp remains free and has no paid tier, but its parent firm Meta is increasingly bringing businesses to the instant messaging app. The firm appears to have dialled up its effort in recent months — and not everyone is happy about it.
The Dubai-headquartered Telegram, which has said in the past that it needed to make money to keep the platform afloat, citing computing costs, plans to expand its monetization efforts next year, Durov said. The firm is developing a host of decentralized tools, including non-custodial wallets and exchanges, he said late last month.
“Thanks to successful monetization, Telegram will be able to pay for the servers, traffic and wages necessary to keep building new features and supporting existing ones. While some other apps consider their users a tool to maximize revenue, we consider revenue a tool to maximize value for our users,” he wrote Tuesday.
Telegram Premium tops 1 million subscribers by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch
Telegram announced today that will it hold an auction for usernames — for both individual accounts and channels — through a marketplace built on top of the TON blockchain.
In August, Telegram founder Pavel Durov first mentioned the idea by noting the possibility of adding “a little bit of Web 3.0 to Telegram in the coming weeks.” At that time, he said he was impressed by the success of the TON Foundation’s auction of domain names.
“I’m really impressed by the success of the auction TON recently conducted for their domain/wallet names. Wallet.ton was sold for 215,250 Toncoin (~$260000) while casino.ton was sold for ~$244000.
If TON has been able to achieve these results, imagine how successful Telegram with its 700 million users could be if we put reserved @ usernames, group and channel links for auction,” he said. Now the company is putting this plan into action.
Telegram and TON Foundation are using a separate website Fragment.com as a hub for these auctions. Users will be able to log into the site using Telegram, the tonkeeper app, or their TON-based wallets. The website will also help users link their Telegram accounts to the handles that they have bought.
At launch, the chat app is auctioning four and five-character handles that will be available for everyone. Telegram users can also put up their own existing handles for auction. Each handle put up for auction will end in a week with an extra hour for final bidding. The company is setting a minimum auction value for four character handles at 10,000 toncoins — which converts to roughly $18,400 at the time of writing.
“For the first time, social media users will be able to transparently prove that they own their handles thanks to their tokenisation on the TON blockchain,” Andrew Rogozov, Founding Member of the TON Foundation said in a statement
Telegram had big ambitions in the web3 world but it had to ditch those ambitions. In 2018, the company hatched up plans for Telegram Open Network (TON) blockchain project and an initial coin offering (ICO). The project got backing from big-name investors including Benchmark and Lightspeed Capital, which put up $1.7 billion. However, after a legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Telegram was forced to forsake the project.
After Telegram stopped working on TON, various independent groups continued the development with Toncoin getting backing from Durov and winning the rights to ton.org website in 2021. But the Telegram founder has tried to distance himself from direct involvement with the project.
Telegram has been trying various methods to earn money to keep the company sustainable. Last year it introduced ad spots on public channels. Earlier this year, the company introduced a paid plan that allows large file transfers, exclusive stickers and reactions, and the ability to convert voice messages into text. The new announcement of username auction on the blockchain is another step to get some more moolah in the bank.
Telegram announces username auctions on TON blockchain by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.
Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has decreased. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps.
This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.
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The headlines this week were dominated by Twitter’s former head of security, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko’s, explosive whistleblower complaint.
The former Twitter employee accused the company of cybersecurity negligence that ranged from a lack of basic security controls to national security threats and foreign intelligence risks. But one more immediate question on everyone’s minds is whether or not Zatko’s statements about bots on the platform will help or hurt Elon Musk’s case.
To some, it may appear that Zatko has backed up Musk’s claims when he notes that there are millions of active accounts on the platform which Twitter is not including in its mDAU metric — a metric Twitter itself invented to count only those users it could monetize by way of advertisements. (That is, mDAUs are mostly people, not spambots.)
“These millions of non-mDAU accounts are part of the median user’s experience on the platform,” states the complaint. “And for this vast set of non-mDAU active accounts, Musk is correct: Twitter executives have little or no personal incentive to accurately ‘detect’ or measure the prevalence of spam bots,” it reads.
The complaint then goes on to say that Twitter, when asked in 2021, couldn’t identify the total number of spam bots on its platform, and couldn’t provide an accurate upper bound on that figure.
Ah ha!, right? Even Twitter doesn’t know how much spam it has!
Well, maybe that’s not the smoking gun you might think.
Musk’s legal argument is that Twitter has been misleading its users and investors about the number of bots on its platform, which the company has estimated to be less than 5%. (Because surely this all hasn’t come about because Musk overpaid for the deal and now wants out!)
However, Twitter has been reporting to the SEC that spam and bots are less than 5% of its mDAUs — a figure that’s essentially already scrubbed of bots so advertisers know how many real eyeballs they’re able to reach. What’s more, while Zatko may have a point that this sort of made-up, proprietary metric is ripe for manipulation, he also says in the complaint that Twitter execs are “incentivized to avoid counting spam bots as mDAUs.” In other words, it seems likely that Twitter’s statements to the SEC are correct when Twitter says its mDAU figures are “less than 5%” spam.
Plus, even if Twitter doesn’t know how much total spam is on the platform at any given time, that doesn’t mean it can’t figure out how much spam is in its mDAU figure — a figure Twitter has explained it calculates using private data. Twitter looks at things like IP addresses, phone numbers, geolocation, client/browser signatures and more, CEO Parag Agrawal noted in a Twitter thread. This helps it to come up with its mDAU figure, by classifying accounts that appear to belong to “real” users as such.
It’s worth noting the total spam on Twitter’s platform is always in flux — when Twitter does a big sweep for spam and bots, users have noticed their follower counts drop. However, Twitter wasn’t monetizing based on those bots nor was it reporting inflated user metrics to the SEC by including spambots in its user figures — at least, not since its invention of the mDAU in 2019.
And while it’s true that mDAUs are not a representation of the spam-filled Twitter user experience today — an experience, remember, that Musk claimed he was buying Twitter to fix! — they are an indicator of how many real people are on the site. And that’s what a new owner would want to know anyway, right?
Whether or not mDAUs represent Twitter as it truly is misses the point. Sure, mDAUs may be a non-standard metric. It might not be comparable to the metrics used by other social platforms. It may even be a bad metric! But that’s not relevant to the case. The fact is, it’s not a new metric. Twitter defined it years ago and was using mDAUs long before Musk committed to buying Twitter. It’s what Twitter reports to the SEC.
So good luck using this as proof of being lied to, Mr. Musk. Can’t wait to see how that works in court!
Image Credits: Twitter
While the whistleblower news may have been the biggest news story of the week, Twitter dropped some pretty significant product news as well. It’s turning itself into a podcast app.
The company announced an update to its Twitter Spaces tab that would see it integrating podcasts into a revamped experience where content is now organized into hubs called “Stations.” These Stations group content by topics — like news, sports, music and more. The app will also make recommendations based on who you follow and how you engage with content. Twitter Spaces — including both live and prerecorded audio — will also continue to be available in the Spaces tab.
TechCrunch had previously reported that Twitter was developing Stations and a personalized audio digest as part of a makeover coming to its Spaces tab, but we didn’t know the extent of the podcast integrations at the time. The company tells us it’s making over 2 million podcasts available at launch, which are programmatically recommended to users.
Podcasts are ingested as RSS feeds, which means the 2 million figure is not a hard limit — Twitter could expand. Still, it’s a notable out-of-the-gate start, as Spotify today has more than 4 million podcasts, many of which are produced in-house, exclusives or shows recorded in its Anchor app.
Twitter, of course, is home to its own sort of exclusives, known as Twitter Spaces. These live audio programs can be recorded for later listening — similar to podcasts. If the creator doesn’t download, edit and package the Space to send it out to other services on a podcast RSS feed, then these Spaces remain something you could only find on Twitter. (Of note, Twitter says it would include both the recorded Twitter Space and the resulting podcast of that Space in its app — allowing it to count the same show twice.)
Twitter will make recommendations of podcasts to individuals based on how they listen and engage with people and topics. This could also be a competitive advantage of sorts.
As to why it felt the need to do podcasts? That’s less clear. Twitter told us it wants to be “the home for audio conversations.” It also sees an overlap between podcast listeners and Twitter users. Based on its own internal research, 45% of U.S. Twitter users listen to podcasts monthly. More realistically, it likely sees the ability to monetize audio with ads — if this effort pays off.
However, Twitter falls short in terms of key features that would make its app an alternative to your favorite podcast player. There’s no offline listening, no download capability, no support for paid podcasts and no exclusive partnerships. So who, exactly, does the podcast feature serve — those so addicted to Twitter they can’t even leave the app to stream a favorite program, we suppose.
Image Credits: Walmart
Image Credits: Instagram
Image Credits: WhatsApp
Image Credits: Lightricks
Image Credits: Netflix
Consumer social app maker 9count raised an additional $6 million on top of its $21.5 million Series A to help fund development of its flagship app, Wink, and its newer dating app, Summer.
Bengaluru-based healthcare app Mojocare raised $20.6 million in Series A funding led by B Capital Group. The app offers consultations with doctors, therapists and nutritionists and sells products.
Dubai-based Zywa, a neobank aimed at Gen Z users, raised $3 million in seed funding at over $30 million (110 million AED) valuation. The startup aims to expand further into Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Seattle mental health Alongside raised $5.5 million for its in-development adolescent mental health app. The app would allow users to interact with a chatbot and guide them to resources.
Image Credits: Pinterest
Collage-style video “mood boards” are going viral on TikTok — and so is the app that is making them possible. Pinterest’s recently soft-launched collage-maker Shuffles has been climbing up the App Store’s Top Charts thanks to demand from Gen Z users who are leveraging the new creative expression tool to make, publish and share visual content. These “aesthetic” collages are then set to music and posted to TikTok or shared privately with friends or with the broader Shuffles community.
Despite being in invite-only status, Shuffles has already spent some time as the No. 1 Lifestyle app on the U.S. App Store.
During the week of August 15-22, 2022, Shuffles ranked No. 5 in the Top Lifestyle Apps by downloads on iPhone in the U.S., according to metrics provided by app intelligence firm data.ai — an increase of 72 places in the rankings compared to the week prior. It was the No. 1 Lifestyle app on iPhone by Sunday, August 21st, and broke into the Top 20 non-gaming apps on iOS as a whole in the U.S. that same day, after jumping up 22 ranks from the day prior.
But this app isn’t available to all. You need to know someone with an invite to get in. You can try our invite codes FTSNFUFC or L5JI8QCS to try to get in.
Read more about Shuffles here on TechCrunch.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov said Monday that he wants to integrate web3 into the messaging app.
Durov said on his Telegram channel that he was impressed by the TON project — an independent project not affiliated with Telegram — and how it is used for domain name/wallet auctions. He noted that Telegram can replicate TON’s auction on the app by putting custom usernames, group, and channel links on the auction on blockchain — just like NFTs.
Blockchain-based domain naming systems like the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and Solana Bonafida naming service have found popularity with Unstoppable Domain recently reaching unicorn status. If Telegram goes ahead with it, the custom link NFTs could be another way to earn revenue apart from ads and subscription services.
The Telegram founder also mentioned that the company is “inclined to try out TON” as a blockchain of choice for Telegram given its familiarity with the technology. The chat app already allows users to send toncoin to each other directly within the app. So an NFT marketplace based on that seems like a probable next step for web3 integration.
But it also comes with notable blockchain stumbles, too. A few years ago, the chat app also abandoned a TON blockchain project. In 2018, the company explored plans for Telegram Open Network (TON) blockchain project and a mega initial coin offering (ICO). The project gathered a lot of interest from various investors including Benchmark and Lightspeed Capital who put up $1.7 billion. However, after a legal fight with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Telegram was forced to abandon the project.
After Telegram stopped working on TON, various independent groups continued the development with Toncoin getting backing from Durov and winning the rights to ton.org website in 2021.
Here is Durov’s full message:
I’m really impressed by the success of the auction TON recently conducted for their domain/wallet names. Wallet.ton was sold for 215,250 Toncoin (~$260000) while casino.ton was sold for ~$244000.
If TON has been able to achieve these results, imagine how successful Telegram with its 700 million users could be if we put reserved @ usernames, group and channel links for auction. In addition to millions of catchy t.me addresses like @storm or @royal, all four-letter usernames could be made available for sale (@bank, @club, @game, @gift etc).
This would create a new platform where username holders could transfer them to interested parties in protected deals – with ownership secured on the blockchain via NFT-like smart-contracts. Other elements of the Telegram ecosystem, including channels, stickers or emoji, could later also become part of this marketplace.
When it comes to scalability and speed, TON probably has the best technology to host such decentralized sales. Our team can write bullet-proof smart contracts for TON (since it was us who invented its smart-contract language), so we are inclined to try out TON as the underlying blockchain for our future marketplace.
Let’s see if we can add a little bit of Web 3.0 to Telegram in the coming weeks.
Free messaging app Telegram is getting into the subscription game.
Founder Pavel Durov confirmed today a paid offering is coming later this month which will go above and beyond the current free experience — so a premium offer — without, per the post on his Telegram channel, any negative changes to existing features for (non-paying) users.
Indeed, the claim is that users who don’t pay for Telegram will not only not see any degrading of their experience but stand to benefit by being able to (freely) tap into certain premium extras — such as the ability to view “extra large” documents, media and stickers sent by Premium users, or add premium reactions if they’ve already been pinned to a message.
Durov says the move is intended to respond to user demand for additional storage/bandwidth — without such super users destroying Telegram’s ability to sustain a free service for everyone else.
“After giving it some thought, we realized that the only way to let our most demanding fans get more while keeping our existing features free is to make those raised limits a paid option,” he writes.
Exact details of what Premium users will get — and how much it will cost — are not detailed in Durov’s post. But, in recent days, press reports of incoming premium features and pricing have emerged, via the beta app, which suggest it could include stuff like increased file upload size, faster download speeds, voice-to-text conversion, premium stickers, advanced chat management features and more (no ads!).
A price of $4.99 per month has also been reported based on analysis of the beta app. But it remains to be seen what the official pricing will be in different regions.
In his post, Durov sums up Telegram Premium as “a subscription plan that allows anyone to acquire additional features, speed and resources”. He’s also spinning it as a bit of a patronage layer — pitching Telegram super fans who want to support the platform by making a financial contribution. Those that do will get the perk of joining a Premium “club” that will get new features first, he adds.
It’s not clear whether the Premium play is intended by Telegram to just cover costs for extra resources or to generate extra revenue. But given Durov’s framing of “support” it may be that he’s hoping to convert a meaningful portion of Telegram super fans into sustained financial backers. (Albeit, that will ofc depend on uptake of the Premium product.)
The startup’s plan for monetizing its 500 million+ monthly active users still isn’t crystal clear — some nine years into Telegram’s messaging joy ride. (And many months after an earlier attempted foray into crypto foundered.)
In recent times, Telegram has resorted to taking in external funding to pay its server bills — including more than $1 billion in debt financing last year.
On monetization, Durov has talked about wanting a non-intrusive, privacy-friendly way to sustain usage over the long term. Although the platform has been experimenting with ads in public one-to-many channels. Still, Telegram’s principled founder still seems wary of relying on an ad-funded model, writing today: “I believe that Telegram should be funded primarily by its users, not advertisers.”