• by Colin Kirkland , August 14, 2023

To mark Telegram's 10th anniversary, the encrypted cloud-based instant messaging service is rolling out its new Stories feature, which became available to premium users in July, to its 800 million users across the globe.

While Stories features have become mainstays on most leading social media and messaging platforms, Telegram is the only platform that allows users to edit their Stories after posting.

“For the first time in the history of social media, you can update any element of your story at any time – changing its visibility, caption, on-screen text, stickers or anything else – without having to delete and repost it from scratch,” Telegram wrote in a blog post.

In terms of privacy, users can decide who can view their upload –– whether that would be everyone, people included in the user’s contact list, selected contacts, or a list of close friends. Each option can be customized down to any one included or excluded user, the company said.

To hide stories from specific people, users can place them on a “Hidden” list. Users can also choose how long they want their Stories to exist for, between six, 12, 24, 48 hours, or simply until a user wants their story taken down.

Like other platforms, users can add links, captions, and tags to their Stories. And similar to BeReal, users will have access to a dual-camera mode that allows them to post videos and photos that utilize the front and rear cameras simultaneously.

To amplify the premium offering, subscribers can now enable “Stealth Mode,” which erases their views from other Stories they opened in the previous five minutes, as well as what they view for the following 25 minutes.

According to the company, Stories has been the most-requested feature in the history of the app.