Telegram has announced the introduction of its Stories feature which will be available to Premium users, as confirmed in a tweet on Friday.
This official rollout comes a month after Telegram CEO Pavel Durov announced the addition of Stories in July.
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However, there is no specific timeline for when the feature will be available to non-Premium users.
Durov revealed that users had been requesting the Stories feature for years, with over half of all feature requests to Telegram being related to Stories.
Initially hesitant to add Stories, as they are already widespread on other platforms, the company decided to listen to its users’ demands.
With Stories on Telegram, users have control over their audience. They can choose to share their Stories with everyone, their contacts, a select few, or a list of close friends.
The Stories will appear in an expandable section at the top of the chat list, and users can hide Stories from specific contacts by moving them to the “Hidden” list in the Contacts section.
Users can also enhance their Stories by adding captions, links, and tagging other individuals.
Additionally, Telegram offers a unique feature called BeReal-like style, where users can post photos and videos simultaneously from both front and rear cameras.
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Another feature allows users to set an expiration time for their Stories, ranging from six to 48 hours, or they can choose to permanently display Stories on their profile page, similar to Instagram’s Story highlights.
During internal testing, even skeptical members of the Telegram team began to appreciate the Stories feature, leading the company to see it as an integral part of their messaging service.
