Telegram's founder Pavel Durov yesterday said that the encrypted messenger app recorded an additional 70 million users in one day after Social Media Network Giant Facebook was hit by a massive outage.
Billions of users around the world were affected when Facebook and its affiliate social network platforms went offline for seven hours on Monday.
He made this announcement on his telegram channel, where he wrote, “Yesterday Telegram experienced a record increase in user registration and activity.” “We welcomed over 70 million refugees from other platforms in one day.”
He added, “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.”
According to monitoring firm SensorTower, Telegram has gone from the 56th most downloaded free app in the United States to the fifth.
Telegram, a messenger site particularly popular in the former Soviet Union countries and Iran, is used both for private communications and sharing information and news.
It was founded in 2013 by brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov, who also developed Russia’s social media network VKontakte.