Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram, said the messaging app has a “record” of 70 million new users in one day, after Facebook outage services for nearly six hours last Monday. Even encrypted messaging app Signal reported that it gained “millions” of new users on the same day. Both apps primarily compete with WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, which then suffered a outage that also blocked Facebook Messenger and prevented users from sending messages on Instagram.
The 70 million new users represented an increase of more than 10% compared to the 500 million monthly active users Telegram had in January of this year, the last time the app reported a similar increase in new signups. Coincidentally, Facebook’s problems also helped this increase in users. Additionally, WhatsApp mishandled the introduction of a new privacy policy in January, leading users to believe the app would share their private data with parent company Facebook.
Although Durov said that Telegram “continued to operate flawlessly” despite its “unprecedented growth”, he admitted that “some users in the Americas may have experienced slower-than-usual speeds as millions of users from the same regions rushed to sign up for Telegram on Same time.” Signal users also experienced minor issues, such as difficulty seeing all of their contacts.
“For new users, I would like to say this: Welcome to Telegram, the largest independent messaging platform,” Durov wrote. “We won’t let you down when others do.” Telegram has long been responsive to WhatsApp’s 2 billion users, and earlier this year it added the ability to import WhatsApp chat logs in a move designed to help users transition from the Facebook-owned messaging service. Other features focused on video calling and live streaming have also been added over the course of this year, though the app doesn’t yet offer end-to-end encryption by default unlike Signal and WhatsApp.
“When the Facebook-owned Whatsapp app crashes, remember that you and your friends may use a more private non-profit alternative like Signal,” Edward Snowden wrote during the downtime, “It is completely free and only takes 30 seconds to change.” Snowden has long been a supporter of Signal and in 2008 2015 he claimed to use it every day.
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