Telegram Gains 70 Million Users During Facebook & WhatsApp Outage

Facebook Outage Benefits Messaging Competitors

The extensive disruption experienced by Facebook on Monday likely resulted in financial repercussions for the company, its leadership, investors, and numerous businesses dependent on its platforms.

However, this downtime proved advantageous for competing instant messaging applications.

Telegram Experiences Record Growth

Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram, reported on Tuesday that the platform gained an impressive 70 million new users on Monday.

He characterized this surge as a “record increase” in both user registrations and overall activity.

“Our team’s ability to maintain seamless operation during this unprecedented growth period is something I deeply appreciate,” Durov stated via his Telegram channel.

Despite the overall success, some regional performance was impacted.

“Users located in the Americas may have noticed reduced speeds due to the simultaneous influx of millions of new registrations from those continents,” he clarified.

Having recently surpassed 1 billion downloads, Telegram boasted 500 million monthly active users at the beginning of the current year.

Signal Also Sees User Increase

Signal, a direct competitor to both Telegram and WhatsApp, also reported an influx of new users.

A tweet from the company indicated that “millions of new users” had joined the application on Monday.

Recurring Trend of User Migration

This isn't an isolated incident of Telegram and Signal benefiting from WhatsApp’s challenges.

Earlier this year, both platforms experienced significant user growth when WhatsApp faced difficulties in clearly communicating the details of its updated privacy policy.

“Even minor occurrences can lead to substantial consequences,” commented Brian Acton, executive chairman of Signal’s parent company, regarding WhatsApp’s earlier issues, in a TechCrunch interview.

Note: The article’s headline has been revised for improved clarity.