WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook went down globally on Tuesday (5/1-1/2021) resulting in Mark Zuckerberg losing assets of up to IDR 85.6 trillion. But on the one hand, this problem has brought Pavel Durov a fortune, because as many as 70 million people have migrated to Telegram within six hours.
According to the man who is the founder and CEO of Telegram, the surge in users during WA, IG and FB down yesterday set a record in user registration and activity.
"I am proud of how our team handled the unprecedented growth as Telegram continues to work flawlessly for most of our users. That said, some users in America may experience slower than usual speeds as millions of users from this continent rush to sign up for Telegram at the same time," Durov said on his Telegram channel.
With a long blackout, people are looking for alternatives to sending messages other than using WhatsApp. This moment, said Durov, should be used by Telegram to attract more users.
"I ask our existing users to greet their newly arrived friends, help them unpack, and tell them what we have. Make sure they stick around and see why Telegram is ahead of the competition," the Russian wrote.
Apart from Telegram, Signal also got millions of new users during WhatsApp downtime. As we previously reported, Signal was even overwhelmed by the surge in new users.
"Millions of new people joined Signal today and our messaging and calling system is up and running but some people can't see all their contacts showing up on Signal," Signal said in a tweet.
"We are working hard to fix it," he continued.
