In 72 hours, the cloud-based instant messaging software and application service, Telegram gained an additional 25 million new users and has successfully surpassed 500 million active users in the first week of January.
Telegram company’s CEO and Founder Pavel Durov announced the good news via a blog post. “This is a significant increase compared to last year when 1.5M new users signed up every day. We’ve had surges of downloads before, throughout our 7-year history of protecting user privacy. But this time is different.”
The change of WhatsApp’s privacy policy ignited the increase in Telegram’s new users, although, Whatsapp has made major clarification to the new privacy and policy. As a result of the action, several users moved to Telegram and Signal.
“People no longer want to exchange their privacy for free services. They no longer want to be held hostage by tech monopolies that seem to think they can get away with anything as long as their apps have a critical mass of users.
With half a billion active users and accelerating growth, Telegram has become the largest refuge for those seeking a communication platform committed to privacy and security. We take this responsibility very seriously. We won’t let you down.”
The company also mentioned that the new users are from across the globe including 38% from Asia, 27% from Europe, 21% from Latin America, and 8% from MENA. Telegram pointed out that its aim is to reach billions of users in the near future.
Telegram also added in its blog post “Those of you who have used Telegram for the last several years now we’ve been consistent both when it comes to defending private data and to improve our apps. For those of you who just joined and are wondering what Telegram stands for, I’d like to quote.”
