Telegram Claims 3 Million New Users Following Facebook's Outage

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Facebook’s 15-hour downtime could have led to a surge of new people signing-up to Telegram, one of Messenger’s direct competitors.

In the last 24 hours, messaging app Telegram has seen over 3 million new users signing up for its platform. And it’s probably not a coincidence that this happened during what is now known as Facebook’s worse downtime ever.

For the better part of 15 hours, millions of users found themselves unable to use most of Facebook’s apps and platforms. Facebook, but also Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram were down. And just days after Mark Zuckerberg announced the future of Facebook will be private messaging, it seems the “incident” caused millions to flock away.

Telegram’s founder, Pavel Durov, took a subtle swipe at the social media giant, explicitly welcoming users to his platform where “We have true privacy and unlimited space for everyone.” A Telegram spokesperson confirmed that Facebook’s misfortunes were the likely cause of the surge in new members, explaining that “These outages always drive new users.”

For many, Telegram is perceived as the solution to growing privacy concerns.

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For many, Telegram is perceived as the solution to growing privacy concerns. Not only does it offer end-to-end encryption, the company also built its fame by allegedly refusing government requests for encryption keys and user information. As a result, Telegram has faced restrictions or been banned in several markets like Russia, Iran and China.