Telegram gained 70mn new users during Facebook outage: Founder Durov

Telegram founder and chief executive Pavel Durov said on Tuesday that his instant messaging app added a staggering 70 million users yesterday after Facebook was hit by a massive outage.

Durov described it as a "record increase in user registration and activity" for the service.

Telegram, a messenger site particularly popular in the former Soviet Union countries and Iran, is used both for private communications and sharing information and news.

"The daily growth rate of Telegram exceeded the norm by an order of magnitude, and we welcomed over 70 million refugees from other platforms in one day," Durov wrote on his Telegram channel.

Durov said some users in the Americas may have experienced slower speeds as millions rushed to sign up at the same time, but that the service worked as usual for the majority.

He praised his team for handling the unprecedented growth because Telegram continued to work flawlessly for the vast majority of the users.

He also asked the existing users to say hi to their newly arrived friends, help them unpack, and let them know what Telegram has in stock. Durov also urged the existing users to make sure that the new users stick around and see why Telegram is light years ahead of the competition.

Potentially billions of users were impacted Monday when the dominant social network and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms went offline for seven hours. Facebook blamed its outage, which kept its 3.5 billion users from accessing services such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, on a faulty configuration change.

EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said the outage demonstrated the repercussions of relying on just a few big players and underscored the need for more rivals.

Russia said the incident showed Moscow was right to develop its own sovereign internet platforms and social networks.

WhatsApp's nearly six-hour-long outage on Monday hit trading of assets from cryptocurrencies to Russian oil, market players said, although a quick shift to alternative platforms such as Telegram limited severe disruption.