In context: A couple of days ago, we witnessed what might have been Facebook's greatest outage. WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and even the company's internal network were down due to a configuration change on the backbone routers, leading many who depend on these apps to find alternatives in Telegram and Signal.
Telegram's CEO, Pavel Durov, stated Telegram registered over 70 million new users on Monday, October 4th, a record for the encrypted messaging app. Besides Telegram, some Facebook messaging app users also moved to Signal, which reported that "millions" of new users joined the platform on the same day.
"The daily growth rate of Telegram exceeded the norm by an order of magnitude, and we welcomed over 70 million refugees from other platforms in one day. I am proud of how our team handled the unprecedented growth because Telegram continued to work flawlessly for the vast majority of our users," said Telegram's CEO. "For the new users I’d like to say this – welcome to Telegram, the largest independent messaging platform. We won’t fail you when others will."
Durov added that users in the Americas might have "experienced slower speed than usual" due to the sheer number of concurrent users entering the platform. Signal users also faced similar issues, as some couldn't see all of their contacts in the app.
Earlier this year, Telegram and Signal also registered peaks of users registrations after WhatsApp shared its new privacy policy, stating it would share data with its parent company. Facebook's messaging app explained that the privacy policy wasn't that bad, but many users still decided to change to other platforms as they felt their privacy was being endangered.
The last time Telegram shared its numbers, the app had 500M active accounts and was downloaded over 1B times. With 70 million new users, both figures should have increased proportionally.
Image credit: AARN GIRI
https://www.techspot.com/news/91604-telegram-summed-70m-new-users-single-day-thanks.html
