Telegram CEO Pavel Durov announced that Telegram's messaging app Telegram had surpassed 70 million users Monday. This was despite Facebook experiencing a six-hour-long outage. Signal encrypted messaging app also reported millions of new users in the same day. These apps compete with Facebook's WhatsApp. However, the outage also affected Facebook Messenger and made it impossible for users to send messages on Instagram.
70 million users is a significant increase over the 500 million monthly active Telegram users as of January 2012. This was the last time Telegram reported a similar surge of new signups. This increase in users was also aided by Facebook's problems. WhatsApp's January privacy policy was mishandled, leading to fears that the company would share private user data with its parent company Facebook.
Telegram welcomes all new users
Durov stated that Telegram worked flawlessly despite its incredible growth. However, Signal users experienced issues with their ability to see all their contacts.
To all new users, I'd like to extend my warmest welcome to Telegram. It is the largest independent messaging platform. Durov wrote. Telegram will not fail you. Telegram has been courting WhatsApp's 2 billion users for years. In an effort to assist users in switching from Facebook-owned messaging services, it added the ability to import WhatsApp chat history to its platform earlier this year. It has also added other features to video calling and live streaming over the past year, but it doesn't offer end-to–end encryption by default like Signal or WhatsApp.
The downtime of Facebook's Whatsapp is a reminder to you and your friends that there are other alternatives.
