Telegram Introduces Stories Feature for Premium Users: A Closer Look at the Delayed Addition

Telegram, the popular instant messaging service, has started rolling out its Stories feature to a select group of users, the announcement of this feature was officially made in late June.

Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, had previously been reluctant to introduce the Stories feature, however, repeated requests from users prompted the company to reconsider, ultimately deciding to meet their demands.

Durov acknowledged that there were internal doubts about whether Stories were a good idea, but he stated that the team now couldn’t imagine Telegram without them.

Initially scheduled to launch at the beginning of July, the feature was delayed, but it has now started to become available for subscribers of Telegram Premium.

It’s worth noting that Telegram is one of the latecomers to support the Stories feature, following its success on Snapchat, many other apps and services have adopted it over the years, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok, Twitter, and even the business-focused social network LinkedIn have all added their versions of Stories, signal, the encrypted messaging app, is another notable platform that introduced Stories.

Telegram had previously revealed that its version of Stories would function in a similar way to other popular social media apps, users will be able to choose who can view their Stories, whether it’s everyone, all contacts, select contacts, or a close friends list.

The published Stories will appear at the top of the chats in a space that can expand and collapse, and users will have the option to hide some Stories when needed.

Furthermore, users will have control over the expiration time of their Stories, with options ranging from 6 to 48 hours, they will also be able to keep them permanently displayed on their profile page, similar to how Instagram handles Stories.