If Telegram is one of the messaging apps you use then you probably already know that a little less than a month ago it finally got a long-awaited feature: Stories. Besides being one of the last messaging apps to adopt Stories, Telegram even made the arguably bad decision of putting them behind a paywall.
Okay, to be precise, Stories weren’t exactly paywalled. While those with a Premium Telegram subscription could create and upload them, others could only watch. Now if that is not blatantly greedy we don’t know what is. Thankfully, the company has come to its senses and announced that everyone will be able to post Stories on their profile from now on.
But wait, isn’t this change unfair to those who have already paid for the $4.99 Premium subscription plan? Well, no. The rest of the story-related perks that came with a Premium subscription are still exclusive to it. Among these is the ability to go into stealth mode, which allows you to watch other people’s Stories without them knowing (creepy if you ask us…).
Other Premium features with Telegram Stories include longer captions, permanent view history (meaning you can see who’s viewed your stories even after they expire), showing up higher on other people’s feeds, and an increased cap of up to 100 stories. Outside of Stories, a Premium membership also gets rid of all ads on the platform, and enables larger file uploads and faster downloads, and transcriptions.
Uploading a Story on Telegram is quite straightforward and similar to competitors like Instagram. You can tag other people, use photos and videos from your library or directly shoot from the app. Telegram’s twist on the format comes in the form of customizable expiration times. You can choose between 6, 12, 24, and 48 hours.
If you paid that 5 bucks just to be able to upload Stories on Telegram, now is the time to unsubscribe. Just make sure you have your app updated so you get the feature.