While millions of users bemoaned yesterday's social media meltdown, the global outage of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook was great news for rival messaging service Telegram.
The Verge spotted Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov boasting that while Facebook's services went dark, Telegram gained a whopping 3 million new users.
"I see 3 million new users signed up for Telegram within the last 24 hours. Good. We have true privacy and unlimited space for everyone."
That's quite the humble brag if true.
Dubai-based Telegram differs from Facebook-owned messaging services like WhatsApp in a few ways, primarily its cloud-based "always synced" approach. You can access your messages from multiple devices simultaneously, and using it across those devices is pretty seamless. It has also offered end-to-end encryption since it launched in 2013.
Well, sort of. Be aware that for true privacy and encryption, you need to start a secret chat. Telegram doesn't offer this service by default.
We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.
— Facebook (@facebook) March 13, 2019
What may be more appealing to the average user, however, is the company's commitment to maintaining a completely ad-free service (it will introduce non-essential paid options should a new source of revenue be needed), with an accompanying pledge to never sell your data or enslave your children. Seriously, that's from their FAQ.
Telegram hasn't been able to escape criticism, however. In the past, the company was attacked for developing a custom encryption protocol instead of using existing, freely available alternatives. To combat those concerns, Telegram does release the source code for all of their clients across iOS, Android, browser, and desktop (including macOS and Linux).
Then there's the slightly darker history of terrorist organization ISIS encouraging its members to use Telegram because of its encryption and privacy-first approach. . .
As of March 2018, the service had 200 million users, at which point the company remarked that "we have never promoted Telegram with ads, so all these 200 million people are on Telegram because you invited them to join."
At any rate, it remains to be seen what percentage of those 3 million new users will stick around now that all of Facebook's services have been restored, but it certainly inserts a compelling talking point into Telegram's future marketing efforts.
