On Monday we started the week with great force. Because in the afternoon it fell, the sacred triumvirate literally collapsed: WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram. It is not the first time in a long time, but it seems to happen every so often. And of course, when the queen messaging app crashes, what do we do apart from going to Twitter to complain – which incidentally endured the onslaught of users of these three networks for hours and hours? Find an alternative.
And what is the best alternative? Well, we have several, but more and more people are switching to Telegram (and others like Signal), which in the almost 6 hours that WhatsApp was not working, gained tens and tens of millions of followers.
Telegram gains users after the fall of WhatsApp
Telegram won a “record” than 70 million new users during the outage of Facebook services, announced the CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov. The encrypted messaging app Signal also reported that it had gained “millions” of new users on the same day. The 70 million new users is an increase of more than 10% compared to the 500 million monthly active users that Telegram had in January of this year, the last time it reported a similar increase in new registrations.
Coincidentally, This latest increase in users was also helped by the problems of Facebook: In January, WhatsApp mishandled the introduction of a new privacy policy, raising concerns that it would share private user data with parent company Facebook.
A growth not without problems too
Although Durov claimed that Telegram “continued to work without problems” Before his “unprecedented growth”, he also admitted that “some users in America may have experienced slower speed than usual, as millions of users from these continents rushed to register on Telegram at the same time. “Signal users were also experiencing issues where they weren’t able to see all of their contacts.
“For new users I would like to say this: welcome to Telegram, the largest independent messaging platform”, Durov wrote. “We will not fail you when others do”. Telegram has long courted WhatsApp’s 2 billion users, and earlier this year added the ability to import WhatsApp chat histories, in a move designed to help users switch from Facebook-owned messaging service.
Throughout this year it has also added other features focused on video calling and live streaming, although it still does not offer end-to-end encryption by default, unlike Signal and WhatsApp.
.
