The leadership at Telegram has decided to share advertisement-based revenue with channel owners on its platform. These rewards will be allocated in the form of Toncoin – the native cryptocurrency of the TON blockchain. So essentially, when advertisements displayed on a particular channel fetch revenue, 50 percent of it will be given to the owner of the channel in the form of Toncoin tokens. This development is going into effect starting Friday, March 1.
“Broadcast channels on Telegram generate 1 trillion views monthly. Currently, only 10 percent of these views are monetised with Telegram Ads. In March, the Telegram Ad Platform will officially open to all advertisers in nearly a hundred new countries,” revealed Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, while making the announcement.
A tool of messenger marketing that lets merchants create sponsored posts; the Telegram Ad Platform is a fast way to broadcast advertisements on channels with tens of thousands of followers. Now that Telegram is set to allow advertisers from around a hundred nations to circulate their promotional content through the app, it decided to give back to its community. From a bigger perspective, with this incentive program, Telegram could also be looking to increase the number of people creating channels on the platform and bringing engagement to the app – contributing to the overall engagement on the platform.
“This will create a virtuous circle, in which content creators will be able to either cash out their Toncoins — or reinvest them in promoting and upgrading their channels,” Durov added.
Following this announcement, the Toncoin token spiked in value by over 40 percent this week. The token as of Friday, March 1 is trading at $2.64 (roughly Rs. 218) after it recorded a profit of 3.12 percent in the last 24 hours as per CoinMarketCap. The fully diluted market cap for Toncoin at present stands at $13.6 billion (roughly Rs. 1,13,126 crore).
It is however noteworthy, that Telegram has not yet disclosed the criteria for revenue sharing, TechCrunch reported. The end-to-end encrypted messaging platform caters to around 800 million users from around the world, statistics tracked by Business of Apps show.
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For details of the latest launches and news from Samsung, Xiaomi, Realme, OnePlus, Oppo and other companies at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, visit our MWC 2024 hub.
WhatsApp is reportedly working on a new feature that is expected to allow users to exercise more privacy when using WhatsApp Web. It may soon be unnecessary for users to share their phone numbers with others to connect with them on the instant messaging platform. The firm is reportedly developing a feature that will allow users to search for others on the platform by their usernames. The messaging client has previously been tipped to be working on the feature for Android users. Now, it is being reported that the feature may soon make its way to WhatsApp Web.
A report by WhatsApp feature tracker WABetaInfo states that WhatsApp is working on a feature for its Web client that is expected to allow a user to connect with others on the platform by looking up their usernames. Right now, people need to exchange phone numbers to connect on WhatsApp. The purported feature will help users connect with others without compelling them to share their numbers with people with whom they do not want to share them.
The username-based search on WhatsApp is expected to enhance privacy and encourage more secure communication without having to compromise any personal details. A screenshot of the work-in-progress feature shared in the report shows that once it is available, users can connect with anyone by searching for the name, phone number or username.
A similar feature is already available on Telegram, a competing cloud-based instant messaging platform. WhatsApp has previously been reported to be working on the same username-based search feature for its Android version. The new report claims that this feature is expected to be available for WhatsApp Web users as well in a future update.
This development comes a day after it was reported that WhatsApp is also working on a feature that will allow users to create usernames from the WhatsApp Web application. Notably, users will be allowed the flexibility to change their WhatsApp username at any time, according to the previous report.
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Telegram rolled out its first major update of 2023 on February 3 and added a few important features. The last major update that the app received was in December last year. Some of the latest updates are, however, available for Telegram Premium users only, among which is also the option of translating an entire chat in real time. The translate button is located at the top of any foreign-language thread, including personal chats, groups and channels. Users can choose which languages to translate to or hide the bar from the options menu.
Among updates that are available for all users is the option to see a detailed breakdown of the network usage by the Telegram app. A post on the social media platform’s official site said, “You can see how much data has been used by Telegram with detailed pie charts for Wi-Fi and mobile data – and adjust your auto-download settings to suit your data plan.”
Users can also control the autosave feature of any incoming media with the latest Telegram update. “You can control when media is saved automatically to your gallery based on its size, type and which chat it was received from. This menu now also supports exceptions, so you can only save exactly what you want,” the post read. This feature is supported by another one dubbed the “Granular Media Permissions”, which allows admins to “choose whether group members are allowed to send 9 distinct media types – like photos, voice or video messages. They can also disable text messages to create media-only groups.” It also enables “voice notes only or quiz-only communication” without regular admin interference.
With the new update, Telegram users who have logged out can quickly re-enter their Apple or Google IDs without accessing an SMS code, but they will still be required to enter their 2-Step Verification password if they have one set.
This update also allows bot developers on Telegram to “add special buttons which help users select groups, channels or people that meet predefined criteria. For example, this can be used to quickly add the bot to a group where the user is an admin and topics are enabled.”
Telegram also introduced several updates with regard to emojis. The site has introduced several hundreds of custom emojis and interactive emojis, the latter will “unleash a full-screen effect” when tapped, as per the post. All “stickers and emoji are now sorted by categories” and users can “hold any emoji to zoom in and get a better look before sending.” Telegram also allows “any sticker or animated emoji” to turn “into a profile picture.”
Another premium feature update mentioned in the post is the offer of a 40 percent discount on the “Telegram Premium subscription by pre-paying for a year.”
Samsung’s Galaxy S23 series of smartphones was launched earlier this week and the South Korean firm’s high-end handsets have seen a few upgrades across all three models. What about the increase in pricing? We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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Social media platform Twitter suspended a bot account tracking its owner Elon Musk’s private jet, the account’s operator Jack Sweeney said on Wednesday.
The account tracked movements of Musk‘s private jet using data in the public domain and puts out alerts.
Musk said in a tweet in November that his commitment to free speech “extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk”.
Sweeney, a 20-year-old University of Central Florida student, tweeted On Saturday that Ella Irwin, Twitter’s Vice President of trust and safety, requested the account be filtered and less visible to users.
Twitter and Sweeney did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
In media interviews, Sweeney has said that he turned down a $5,000 offer from the Tesla chief executive officer in 2021 to shut down his bot account.
Meanwhile, Twitter has undergone several changes ever since the billionaire took over the charge of the social media platform. This week, Musk disbanded a key advisory group, the Trust and Safety Council, made up of dozens of independent civil, human rights and other organisations. The company formed the council in 2016 to address hate speech, harassment, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm and other problems on the platform.
On the other hand, Musk has been trying to prove through giving selected journalists access to some of the company’s internal communications dubbed “The Twitter Files” that officials from the previous leadership team allegedly suppressed right-wing voices.
Telecom operators’ body COAI on Tuesday made a strong pitch for OTT (over-the-top) communication services to directly compensate telcos for data traffic they are driving onto the networks, as it advocated a licensing and light-touch regulation framework for such services.
Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI) Director General SP Kochhar said the association, as part of the draft telecom bill, has given its suggestions on how OTT communication services should be defined to ensure there is no ambiguity.
Other aspects like exact financial model for OTT communication services to compensate telecom service providers will be made to the government going forward as and when the nuances of framework for light-touch regulation is discussed, Kochhar told reporters at a briefing.
In future, the same principle of revenue share basis data consumption can be applied to other OTTs (all categories) as well, he added. For now, COAI’s suggestions are confined to the realm of OTT communication apps, not the entire ecosystem, since the draft bill mentions communication apps.
COAI maintained that KYC is an essential requirement, be it for telcos or OTT communication services.
Industry bodies COAI and Broadband India Forum (BIF) had been locked in a pitched battle on the issue of treatment of OTTs while consultations on the draft telecom bill was underway.
The telecom service providers, under the aegis of COAI, have been pushing for OTT communication services to be brought under regulation. COAI has been propagating ‘same service same rules’ for OTT communication services and telcos, to ensure a level playing field.
On the other hand, digital think-tank BIF — which counts tech companies such as Tata Consultancy Services, Cisco, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook-owner Meta as its key members — has warned that the regulation of OTT players could stifle the socioeconomic ecosystem and hurt innovation.
COAI, in a note outlining the recent submissions on the draft telecom bill, said: “The OTTs providing telecom services similar to telcos such as voice/video calling and messaging within the meaning of telecom Bill… be defined clearly, and the same regulatory and security obligations to be met by them as done by TSPs for providing similar services.” Alternatively, it said, OTT communication service providers can pay directly to the telcos for use of their networks for providing services “in a fair and equitable manner by way of an equivalent interconnect charge (say network access charge) for the actual traffic carried by these OTTs on TSPs network, which can be easily measured.” The contribution of OTTs to network costs can be based on assessable criteria such as volume of traffic, turnover threshold and number of users, among others.
COAI cited a report which estimated that 56 per cent of the global data traffic on telcos’ network is from leading OTTs. The association also went on to suggest that OTT contribution to exchequer, if a levy is put in place, could be about Rs 800 crore.
“Since the telecom service providers will be receiving the revenue from OTTs as part of their telecom services rendered, they would automatically be paying licence fee to the Government (as part of TSP’s Adjusted Gross Revenue) on an incremental basis to the extent of the payments by OTTs to the TSPs,” COAI said.
Other major recommendations of COAI — whose members include Reliance jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea — include reduction of licence fee from 3 per cent to 1 per cent, a move the association says will ensure that more funds are available to players for rollout of networks. The suggestion on lowering of levies is also part of COAI’s pre-Budget wishlist to the government.
COAI further said Internet shutdowns not only affect telcos’ Average Revenue Per User, but also the consumer base.
“Non commercial infrastructure is also required to be set up by the telecom service providers in this regard, costing them. Reimbursement for the same to be considered by the Government,” COAI has suggested. There should be standard operating procedures spelt out for such actions and accountability for the same must lie with the officials initiating or supervising such actions, it noted.
Beside this, it said, contributions towards the Telecom Development Fund should be met from budgetary allocation and from amounts collected through spectrum auctions as also “from contribution from entities that cause the traffic, that is, OTTs – streaming, gaming and social media companies”.
So far as protection of users is concerned, the “Bill may be extended to cover cyber or financial fraud or unsolicited commercial communications and may include a proviso to align the powers of Telecom Department on this issue with TRAI. Ideally there should be only one body regulating the issue,” COAI said.
The draft telecom bill seeks to replace three laws — the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1933 and the Telegraph Wires (Unlawful Possession) Act, 1950.
The bill proposes all Internet calling and messaging apps to comply with the Know Your Customer (KYC) provisions when they come under the telecom regulation ambit.
The telecom department has also mooted a provision for the refund of fees in case a telecom or Internet provider surrenders its licence.
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Crypto market maker and Web3 investment company DWF Labs has announced that it will become “a prominent supporter of the TON ecosystem.” The company is also investing $10 million (roughly Rs. 80 crore) in the Layer-1 blockchain network. TON — or The Open Network — is a third-generation proof-of-stake blockchain project originally conceived by the creators of the Telegram instant messaging application. However, the TON community now develops the blockchain and steers its direction. As part of the new partnership, DWF Labs will support TON with investment, token development, market creation, and exchange listing.
A press release detailing the agreement states that the company plans to invest in a total of 50 TON projects over the next year. The release notes TONcoin’s current $20 million (roughly Rs. 160 crore) trading volume, and confidently claims that DWF Labs will double the figure within three months. To help sustain volumes, the market-making firm plans to develop a reliable OTC market for traders making larger transactions.
A managing partner of DWF Labs, Andrew Grachev, commented on the partnership, saying, “We are excited by the TON Foundations’ vision to deliver a decentralised internet, and so are delighted to partner with them to support projects directly and foster growth in transactions.”
The Open Network is a proof-of-stake blockchain designed in 2018 by the brothers who also created the Telegram instant messaging app. The project ran into legal troubles for its initial coin offering and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ordered Telegram to return funds to investors.
Following a 2020 judgment against Telegram, the TON community took over development, quickly establishing the TON Community Foundation. As an open-source project that was already in the test net phase, much of the network code was already available.
Partnering with DWF Labs is the latest milestone for the TON Foundation. Earlier, they achieved cooperation with Huobi Group and KuCoin Ventures. In addition, the TON ecosystem notes accelerating growth, with TON Sites and TON proxy being the latest additions. Those two features and tools are crucial to unlocking the future of a decentralised internet.
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A Russian lawmaker on Wednesday urged state institutions to stop using WhatsApp messenger and the industry ministry sought to promote domestically produced software as Russia tries to wean itself off Western technology.
WhatsApp owner Meta Platforms was found guilty of “extremist activity” in Russia in March and later added to financial monitoring agency Rosfinmonitoring’s list of “terrorists and extremists”. Meta’s lawyer in court has said Meta was not carrying out extremist activity and was against Russophobia.
Russia blocked Meta’s Facebook and Instagram in March, objecting to restrictions on Russian media and some posts permitted by users in Ukraine.
Widely used among Russians, WhatsApp has always remained available, but Anton Gorelkin, deputy head of the Russian parliament’s committee on information policy, on Wednesday said he personally would be deleting the app and recommended a wider ban.
“I think it is necessary to introduce a full ban on WhatsApp use for official purposes by the Russian state and municipal employees,” Gorelkin wrote on Telegram, an alternative messenger that is very popular in Russia.
“Whether it is a Russian alternative or from Dubai does not matter — the main thing is that it does not belong to a company that openly participates in the information war against our country and is included on the list of terrorist and extremist organisations.”
Russia has acknowledged major shortcomings with its electronics industry. As Western sanctions and an exodus of foreign firms stymie its access to technology imports and solutions, Moscow has sought to boost the industry with tax breaks and preferential loans.
Vasily Shpak, deputy industry and trade minister, said the niche vacated by foreign telecoms manufacturers should be filled by domestic ones.
“There will be no going back,” Interfax news agency quoted Shpak as saying, adding that firms exiting the country must not be allowed to return to the same niches they have vacated.
“This niche should be filled by our producers,” Shpak said, calling for electronics products with domestic software to form the “basis of Russia’s technological independence”.
Telegram recently rolled out its version 8.7.2 beta for iOS, which included a new range of reaction emojis and stickers, as spotted by the Telegram beta channel. These new stickers and emojis are said to be premium features available only for the Telegram Premium users. All users will reportedly receive a prompt asking them if they want to sign up for the Telegram Premium subscription plan when viewing these reactions or stickers on the instant messaging app. It appears that Telegram is looking for new ways to monetise its platform by adding a premium plan that is said to offer special stickers and reactions as a start.
Telegram has not shared much information about the pricing and its exact availability, but as mentioned, the subscription will give users the access to unlock premium stickers and exclusive reaction emojis. This service has been spotted on the iOS beta app for the time being. There are no hints as to when and if the feature will be available on Android. As per the findings of the Telegram beta channel, the premium stickers won’t be visible to the free users in conversations on the platform. Instead, they will see a banner telling them to “unlock additional reactions by subscribing to Telegram Premium.”
In the meantime, we are expecting to hear more from the company about the latest subscription plan unlocking price and what other perks it offers because Telegram has not fully detailed the program yet, as mentioned already.
Moreover, Telegram recently launched a few more features in this year’s second spring update, including custom notification tones, setting custom durations for muting chats or auto-deleting messages, and improved forwarding that preserves replies. Through these features, all users can send and receive new animations as well as animated emojis. Another major feature is the capability for bots that will allow developers to offer website-like experiences through the instant messaging app.
TikTok has surpassed Instagram and become the world’s top downloaded app in the first quarter of 2022, according to a report by app market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The short-video app, which is banned in India, managed to continue to be one of the top-five top downloaded apps worldwide. However, Meta — the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — retained its dominance in the app market globally, with Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp as the three top downloaded apps worldwide after TikTok.
Sensor Tower reports that no app has had more downloads than TikTok since the start of 2018. Since the beginning of 2022, the app has been downloaded more than 175 million times, according to the report.
TikTok was the top app worldwide in Q1 2022 Photo Credit: Sensor Tower
TikTok surpassed 70 million downloads on the App Store worldwide for the third time in the first quarter. It was driven by 11 percent quarter-over-quarter growth in Asia. CapCut, a video editing app from TikTok’s publisher ByteDance, also had the last quarter as its best to date with more than 30 million downloads. It has ranked among the top 10 App Store apps each of the past five quarters, Sensor Tower said in its 75-page report.
Alongside the worldwide growth, TikTok has emerged as the top downloaded app on both the App Store and Google Play in the US and on Google Play in Europe. The ban in India also didn’t impact much in Asia as TikTok continued to be the top-downloaded app on the App Store in the region. It also moved to the third top downloaded app position on Google Play from the fourth one in the quarter earlier.
However, on Google Play worldwide, Instagram and Facebook managed to continue to fight TikTok and retain their leadership on the top-two positions.
In addition to TikTok, YouTube emerged as one of the top-two apps on the US App Store each quarter since the first quarter of 2021, per the report.
Sensor Tower said that while TikTok has surpassed 10 million downloads each of the past nine quarters, YouTube has overtaken this threshold for eight straight quarters.
But nonetheless, TikTok continued to gain momentum in the US. Sensor Tower noted that it was the top app on Google Play for the third straight quarter, with installs up 19 percent year-on-year in the first quarter.
The ongoing trend of connecting people over virtual calls — despite the revival of physical meetings — has apparently helped Zoom to grow in the market in which entertainment-focussed apps including TikTok and Facebook parent Meta are writing new growth stories.
Sensor Tower said that Zoom had positive quarter-on-quarter growth for the first time in a year by reaching the number six position on Google Play in the US with more than three million downloads. It was the top app on Google Play as recently as the first quarter of 2021, the report said.
Apps including Telegram and WhatsApp have a tough fight in Europe. While WhatsApp managed to take the second position in the list of top downloaded apps in the continent, Telegram also had its second-best quarter in the region in the first quarter of 2022, trailing the nearly 28 million installs it had in the same quarter of 2021, according to Sensor Tower.
WhatsApp was also the top app particularly on the App Store in Europe for the seventh straight quarter in the first quarter. Sensor Tower said that it was also WhatsApp’s best first quarter of the year since 2018.
In Asia, Instagram continued to come as the top app for the third straight quarter in the first quarter, followed by Facebook. Instagram was also the top app in India where it accounted for more than 60 percent of Instagram’s installs in the country, Sensor Tower said.
Instagram was also the top app on Google Play in Asia — ahead of Facebook and Shopee. Sensor Tower noted that the photo-sharing app accounted for 29 percent of Meta’s Google Play installs in Asia in the first quarter, up from 26 percent in the same quarter last year and 18 percent in the same quarter of 2020.
Shopping apps are also seen getting bigger in Asia — at least on Google Play. Sensor Tower said that shopping app installs on Google Play in Asia grew 63 percent year-on-year in the first quarter. Top apps include Shopee, Meesho, and Flipkart’s Shopsy.
On the App Store, Subway Surfers, Wordle, and Coloring Match were the top-three games worldwide in the last quarter. Garena Free Fire, Subway Surfers, and Merge Master were, however, the top-three games worldwide on Google Play.
Wordle — which is named after New York Times’ word game Wordle — was also the top game in the US, with more than nine million downloads. It was also the top game on the App Store in the country and had the top US App Store downloads since Among Us in the fourth quarter of 2020. Wordus and Word Guess were the other two games with Wordle-style gameplay that ranked among the top 20 games in the country, the report mentioned.
However, Sensor Tower said Roblox managed to continue ranking among the top-five games each quarter since the fourth quarter of 2020. In Asia, the list of top-three games in the first quarter was the same as the previous quarter, with Garena Fire Fire leading the chart, followed by Ludo King and Subway Surfers.
“Garena Free Fire and Ludo King have been in a tight race since the start of 2019, with Garena Free Fire’s 468 million installs edging Ludo King’s 461 million since that time,” Sensor Tower said.
PUBG Mobile also returned to the top-five list in Asia in the last quarter. It took the top spot on the App Store in the continent, with 37 percent quarter-on-quarter growth. However, Garena Free Fire emerged as the top game on Google Play in Asia. Garena Free Fire Max also managed to get more than 60 percent of its Google Play downloads in Asia in the last quarter, whereas the original title took the other 39 percent, the report shows.
In terms of demographics, India has continued to be the largest market for app downloads in the world in the first quarter. It was followed by the US, Brazil, and Indonesia, per the report.
India continued to lead in the top app markets worldwide in Q1 2022 Photo Credit: Sensor Tower
Sensor Tower also noted that Meta emerged as the top publisher across the globe for the first time since the first quarter of 2020. Google and ByteDance were, though, the two other top publishers in the app market globally.
Overall, worldwide downloads of apps grew 1.4 percent in the first quarter to 36.9 billion from the 36.4 billion downloads reported for the first quarter last year. Downloads from the App Store globally increased to 8.6 billion from 8.4 billion last year, while Google Play downloads reached 28.3 billion from 28 billion, Sensor Tower’s report shows.
The report is based on App Store and Google Play download estimates between January 1 and March 31. Download estimates are on a per-user basis and don’t count re-installs and updates of the same app by the same user. Also, Android app download estimates represent downloads from Google Play only and don’t consider download estimates from third-party Android stores.
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