Since Facebook splashed $19 billion in cash and stock options to get Whastapp under its wings, it has been a blessing in disguise for other messaging apps like Telegram. Many have rushed to leave Whatsapp for fears that Facebook may introduce its annoying ads on the platform and maybe even siphon user data for use in serving ads among other things like constant eavesdropping by Uncle Sams’s workboys at the NSA. We even have groups (privacy lawyers) that have gone to the courts to oppose the Whatsapp acquisition by the world’s largest social network.
As per a tweet by the main Telegram account, the messenger application backed by Russian brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov has now hit the 35 million mark. The service had earlier on reported having issues with its servers due to the huge number of people registering after Whatsapp’s sale and eventual downtime several days later. Telegram reported that it had managed to rake in just shy of 5 million users in the wake of one of Whatsapp’s worst service outages in recent days. On the day of announcement of the Whatsapp-Facebook deal, the service registered slightly over 1 million new users.
Telegram prides itself in increased security for its user’s messages with such nice abilities like deleting a message completely on both the receiver’s and sender’s ends simultaneously being easily possible. Will Telegram’s current 35 million user base eventually grow to match Whatsapp’s 450 million users?
The app is available on major platforms like Android and iOS and even for the PC. It launched on Blackberry 10 devices earlier this month (via an Android port) and though we don’t have an ETA yet, we may not be far away from an official release of a Windows Phone app. The messenger is currently top of app store charts on both Android and iOS and from all indications, its best days lie ahead.
Perhaps Telegram should be more forthcoming with its data and give us the total number of daily active users.
