Telegram now has closed channels with paid subscriptions and viewing of .PDF and .DOCX files

The Telegram administration presented a festive update to the messenger dedicated to its 11th anniversary. It included star reactions, channels with a paid subscription, the ability to publish paid photos and videos by bots and business accounts, as well as the ability to post messages on channels on behalf of other channels or personal accounts.

Image source: telegram.org

To support your favorite channel or blogger, users can now send them star reactions. Owners of such channels will receive 100% of the sent “stars” – the internal currency of the messenger – which can be exchanged for the Toncoin cryptocurrency with a minimum commission or used to pay for advertising with a 30% discount.

Messages with star reactions display the users who sent the most stars, but you can hide your name from this list. Star reactions for channels must be enabled separately in their settings.

Bloggers can now also create channels, subscription to which is carried out for a monthly fee, transferred in “stars” – to subscribe to such channels, authors need to generate special links. Previously, channel owners had the opportunity to monetize content – publishing paid photos and videos; this feature is now available for bots and business accounts. This feature will be useful for developers of services, for example, image generators and video quality enhancement services.

Normal posts on a channel are accompanied by its name and image, but this behavior can now be changed by turning on the Super Channel feature in its settings. When it is active, the administrator can select the profile on whose behalf this publication will be published. The administrator will remain invisible to subscribers unless he chooses to publish on his own behalf.

Finally, Telegram for iOS now has the ability to view documents such as .PDF, .XLS and .DOCX – they open in separate messenger tabs and allow you to easily switch between chats and files. Users of the iOS and Android versions downloaded directly from the messenger website can install the new version of the client; Google Play moderators have not yet approved the update.