Telegram reaps in millions of new users as Facebook goes down for several hours

Facebook and its linked services witnessed a global outage over the past 24 hours. The outage period proved profitable for Telegram which reportedly signed up a whopping three million new users.

Telegram’s founder and CEO Pavel Durov took to his personal Telegram channel to make the announcement. As The Verge notes, the jump in new users is significant as Telegram recorded 200 million active users as of March last year.

Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, all experienced significant outages worldwide, which prompted users to switch to Telegram, known for its encrypted messaging service. Contrary to Facebook, Telegram does not run on targeted ads model and instead uses user donations for functioning.

(With inputs from agencies.)