- Chatter
- The person who writes the direct messages an account sends, usually not the creator, usually working a shift and usually holding several accounts at once.
- Account manager
- The layer above the chatters. Oversees a group of creators, sets targets, reviews threads. In at least one documented agency, paid as a percentage of each creator.
- PPV
- Pay per view. A message whose attachment is locked until the reader pays the stated price. The core unit of revenue in a chatting operation.
- Unlock
- The event of a reader paying to open a PPV. Also used as a ratio, which is meaningless without a definition of the denominator.
- Unlock ratio
- Paid messages opened divided by paid messages sent. Can be computed over sent messages or distinct readers, over a week or since launch, on one account or all of them. Four choices, four different numbers.
- Whale
- A reader who spends far above the median. Reporting describes such readers spending upward of $1,300 and accounting for more than 20% of platform revenue, sometimes handled by a dedicated team.
- Opener
- The first message sent to a new subscriber. Judged on one thing: whether it produces a reply.
- Qualification
- The part of a conversation where a chatter learns what the reader wants, what they can spend and how they like to be spoken to. The chapter most often skipped.
- Tease
- Building an expectation of something specific that is not yet available. Distinct from describing content the reader can already see.
- Ladder
- A sequence of prices that rise, where each step carries a visible reason. A ladder without reasons reads as random pricing.
- Upsell
- Moving a reader from one purchase to a habit of purchases. The highest revenue per minute in the job and the highest variance.
- Cooldown
- The exchange after a purchase in which nothing is sold. Produces no revenue in the shift it happens and most of the revenue in the month after.
- Rebill
- The subscription renewal. Not a message, but the accumulated state of the thread on the renewal date.
- Drip
- A scheduled series of messages sent over time rather than in response to a reader. Useful for reactivation, damaging when it collides with a live conversation.
- Mass message
- One message sent to a whole list at once. Its main hazard is the clock: a list does not share a time zone.
- Handoff
- Passing a live conversation to another person, either at a shift boundary or from an AI system to a human. The largest source of lost context in the job.
- Hybrid mode
- A configuration in which an AI system handles conversations up to a threshold, then hands them to a person. Vendors define the threshold differently: spend, account age, or manual takeover.
- Full AI
- A configuration in which no human is required to press send. Distinct from copilot, where a person approves every message.
- Copilot
- A system that drafts messages for a human to approve or edit. Reduces typing, not headcount.
- Script
- A configured sequence of steps, prices and media for a persona, used to keep a conversation consistent across shifts or across a system. Not the same as a message template.
- Persona
- The written definition of who the account speaks as: age, situation, tone, vocabulary, limits. What makes several people, or a system, sound like one person.
- Caption
- The text sent with a piece of media. In a paid message it is the thing being sold, not a description of the attachment.
- Coverage
- The proportion of hours in which an inbox is actually answered. The real product of a chatting operation, and the thing wages are bought to produce.
- Shift
- The unit the job is sold in. Eight hours in most published accounts, up to twelve in some.
- Target
- The sales quota a chatter is expected to reach in a shift. Reported to have risen 25% in six months at one firm.
- Reactivation
- Bringing back a reader who has gone silent or let a subscription lapse. Cheaper than acquisition and almost always under-worked.
- Telegram Stars
- Telegram’s in-platform virtual currency, currency tag XTR. Bots selling digital goods must transact in Stars. Purchased in packs, so a reader spends a balance rather than a card.
- Invoice message
- On Telegram, a message carrying a photo, a description and a pay button that opens a native payment interface. The Telegram equivalent of a locked attachment.
- Net AI revenue
- The base most AI chatting vendors charge commission on. Worth checking against gross, because the two differ by the platform’s own cut.
- Conversion
- In chatting, usually the share of threads that produce a first purchase. Rarely defined by the person quoting it, and rarely comparable between operations.
Terms that carry a number are explained where the number is sourced: shifts, targets and pay, unlock ratios and ladders, what each tool charges.