Telegram, a messaging app that's already going heavy on the emoji, is tripling down and going hog wild on the smileys and sparkles with its latest feature updates. These changes will revolutionize the way you use them, but some of them will come at a cost (of course).

As we've previously covered while it was still under wraps, Telegram Premium subscribers will have the privilege of using 500 emoji from 10 all-new custom packs on the app in messages and negus captions with some of them accessible by colon-based shortcuts (:shortcut). Furthermore, anyone can submit emoji packs if their own creation! These emoji can be static or animated, but must be packaged in .webm or Telegram's proprietary .tgs format. Designers can consult the full formatting guide for the new Open Emoji Platform for more details.

The company blog also goes into detail on a new batch of interactive emoji animations special for one-on-one conversations. Premium users get to use these as reactions, as well.

Regular users will be able to see the custom and animated emoji and increase the counter on reactions with animated emoji in them.

Premium members can also now restrict who can send them voice and video messages — from everybody to contacts only to no one at all — which should be handy for those especially nasty uninvited messages.

Finally, if all this seems tempting to you, you can have someone gift you a Telegram Premium subscription for 3, 6, or 12 months at a time. If this is how the company wants to get people into supporting the platform, this could become a meaningful way to do it.