Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Telegram’s new Stories feature that lets users share time-limited videos and photos is now live after CEO Pavel Durov shared last month that the feature was in testing (via 9to5Mac). For now, the company is only allowing its paid Premium subscribers to post Telegram Stories.
The Telegram Stories launch comes after rival messaging apps WhatsApp (with statuses) and even Signal have launched their own versions. Durov admitted there was some internal skepticism on whether Stories is a good idea — but shared that the team now “can no longer imagine Telegram without it.”
Snapchat popularized the Stories format before Meta swiped the idea, building them into Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. The NBA, TikTok, and, for a while, T…