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Telegram is rolling out 'view-once' voice and video messages

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Image Credits: Thomas Trutschel / Photothek / Getty Images

Telegram is rolling out a bunch of upgrades as part of its January feature drop including “view-once” video and audio messages, the ability to pause recording while sending a video or an audio message, and new read-time controls.

The app introduced “view-once” photos and videos in one-on-one chats in September 2023. Now, the company is extending this feature to voice and video messages. Users can hit the mic icon to start recording and then pull up to tap on the “view-once” icon to allow the recipient to hear the voice message or look at the video message just once.

Additionally, Telegram is rolling out the ability to pause and resume recording for voice and video messages through the same menu.

Telegram is also adding a way for people to see when the recipient reads your message in one-on-one private chats. You can turn this feature off in the settings.

The company is also introducing some new features for paid users. Now, premium users can hide their read time but still can look at someone else’s read time if they share it publicly.

Plus, paid users can pick who can send them messages first. They can select either “Everyone” or “My Contacts and Premium User.”

Last month, Telegram launched new features for better channel discovery and customization. Later in the month, it introduced improved calls with end-to-end encryption protection that hog less of your phone’s battery. The company also updated its bot platform to let bots react to messages, manage reactions, quotes and links, and send replies to other chats or topics.

OpenSea takes the long view by focusing on its UX even as NFT sales remain low

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Image Credits: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto / Getty Images

It’s fair to say the NFT space has lost a lot of its sparkle over the past few years, but that hasn’t stopped some founders, investors and projects from trucking along in hopes of another surge. Devin Finzer, the CEO behind OpenSea, one of the first NFT marketplaces to gain serious traction and market share, is still betting big on the sector.

On January 1, 2022, NFT global sales volume peaked at $23.73 billion. Two years later, by the first day of 2024, they had fallen 94% to a mere $1.4 billion.

That kind of decline in sales volume obviously has had an impact on the revenue side of OpenSea’s business, but Finzer says it’s not something the company is “laser focused on.” Instead, it is working to improve its core products and user engagement, and bring in new incumbents — work “that sort of leads to higher volumes,” he told me recently on TechCrunch’s Chain Reaction podcast.

The NFT marketplace exploded back in 2021 when everyone and their grandmother was spending on NFTs of profile pictures and digital art, but Finzer thinks those were early use cases. “We still have so much further to go in terms of representing all of the wide array of things that NFT’s can represent,” he said. “Gaming is an example of a category that’s still really early.”
Founded in 2017, OpenSea quickly became one of the most well-known and well-funded NFT marketplaces in the world. It has raised over $400 million in total, and some of its backers include VC firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Paradigm, as well as celebrities such as Kevin Durant and Ashton Kutcher.
But no amount of money can buy lasting success, and Finzer is aware of that reality, noting that his company is trying to fine-tune its product and build for the long run.
“[Customers] come for the product experience initially, then stick around if the product continues to meet their needs and continues to improve alongside the evolution of the space,” he said.
Since its inception, OpenSea has seen sales of over $67.24 million with $36.46 billion in volume, according to DappRadar data. In the past 30 days, it ranked as the third-largest NFT marketplace, behind OKX NFT Marketplace and Blur, with about $100 million in volume.
Finzer admits that the companies and products he’s most loyal to are the ones he’s been using for a long time, and those have improved their user experience. “The long-term approach to user loyalty is really continuing to build a strong product offering.”
Going forward, Finzer is most excited about web3 gaming and “physical items represented as NFTs.” He thinks those two areas will be the most prominent use cases in the NFT space in 2024.
“If you look at existing marketplaces for rare physical sneakers, that’s actually quite vibrant; there’s a whole community of people that like to buy and sell those sorts of physical things,” he said. “So one of the really cool use cases for entities is, you take a physical pair of sneakers, you create an NFT, [and] you can buy and sell that NFT as many times as it can move around from person to person before it’s actually redeemed for the physical item.”
OpenSea has been working with some platforms to launch physical and digital collectibles, Finzer said. “There’s a lot more opportunity to explore and a lot more opportunity for growth there as well.”
Despite the NFT market’s drawbacks, OpenSea wants to stick to its initial mission — to foster open digital economies and “getting that holy grail” of a strong user experience, Finzer said. He views it as a “broad vision,” but pointed out that it encapsulates OpenSea’s goal of building the blocks for “all sorts of different economies” in the NFT space.
“It’s not just about art and profile pictures. It’s really about representing all sorts of different things on-chain . . . and then some things that we haven’t even imagined yet.”
Ultimately, the hope is to enable new use cases, innovation and new jobs in the future, Finzer added. “NFTs, we really think of them as this kind of generic building block for brand-new digital economies. I think we’re still kind of at the beginning of that trend.”
This story was inspired by an episode of TechCrunch’s podcast Chain Reaction. Subscribe to Chain Reaction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to hear more stories and tips from the entrepreneurs building today’s most innovative companies.
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Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on January 31, 2024 in Washington, DC.
  EU privacy body adopts view on Meta's controversial 'consent or pay' tactic 
 
 
   
 by    with No Comment  Tech 
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on January 31, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Image Credits: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Incoming guidance by an expert steering body on European Union data protection law could have major implications for Meta’s advertising business model. The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has decided that large platforms such as Facebook and Instagram cannot force a “binary” pay or consent choice on users, Politico reported on Wednesday, citing two people with direct knowledge of the decision.
Yet, a binary choice (AKA “consent or pay”) is exactly what Meta wants to enforce on users in the region. The decision looks set to leave Meta with no option but to reform its business model to comply with EU law, which would mean giving users in the bloc the ability to deny its tracking.
The EDPB has been meeting this week to discuss adopting an opinion on the so-called “consent or pay” model following a request made back in February by a trio of concerned data protection authorities. A spokeswoman for the EDPB confirmed to TechCrunch that it adopted an opinion on “consent or pay” on Wednesday morning, saying it will be published later today. However, she would not confirm the substance of the decision, saying, “We are not in a position to comment on the content of the opinion before the opinion is published.”
After EU regulators and courts overturned two prior legal bases Meta had claimed for processing people’s data for ads, the company went on to launch a controversial subscription offer in the EU last fall. The company claimed its offer constituted valid consent under the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which regulates how personal data can be handled (including the need to have a valid legal basis for such processing).
However, the choice Meta gives EU users is a binary one: Either consent to its use of personal data for targeted advertising, or pay a monthly fee to access ad-free versions of its social networks. Meta initially set the monthly fee at €13 per mobile account, and later proposed to halve the cost. But privacy campaigners and consumer rights groups have continued to cry foul and file a raft of complaints, arguing the flaws of “consent or pay” run far deeper than Meta’s chosen price-point.
Lawmakers and the European Commission have also waded into the fray. The latter is investigating whether Meta’s use of the mechanism complies with the bloc’s Digital Markets Act, which requires in-scope platforms to obtain consent to process user data for ads. It has also questioned Meta about its claim of consent under the Digital Services Act.
But the EDPB’s opinion is critical for the core issue of whether Meta’s mechanism complies with the EU’s long-standing data protection framework. So the full detail of the opinion will be pored over when it’s made public.
In its report, Politico cites part of the EDPB decision: “In most cases, it will not be possible for large online platforms to comply with the requirements for valid consent if they confront users only with a binary choice between consenting to processing of personal data for behavioural advertising purposes and paying a fee.”
Privacy rights nonprofit noyb, which has been fighting the rise of “consent or pay” tactics on regional websites for years, seized on the development to trumpet a win against Meta. The organization also cautioned that it will need to analyze the full EDPB opinion in detail once it’s available.
“Overall, Meta is out of options in the EU. It must now give users a genuine yes/no option for personalised advertising,” said noyb’s founder and chairman, Max Schrems, in a statement following Politico’s report.
“[Meta] can still charge sites for reach, engage in contextual advertising and the like — but tracking people for ads needs a clear ‘yes’ from users,” Schrems added. He suggested a third option (i.e. not tracking, or not paying) could also, for example, entail Meta collecting revenue from sponsored posts or other types of paid content, just so long as there’s no tracking or targeting of users involved.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the development.
Meta’s ‘consent or pay’ tactic must not prevail over privacy, EU rights groups warn