With people migrating from WhatsApp thanks to the updated privacy policy, rival messaging apps like Telegram and Signal are seeing a lot of growth in terms of new users.
In April last year, Telegram reported that they had reached 400 million active users and just last month, they announced that they were going to start monetizing the app.
Telegram now has more than 500 million users. The privacy-focused messaging app reported that it had recorded 25 million new users in just the past 72 hours.
“Twenty-five million users have joined Telegram in the last 72 hours. 38% of them are from Asia, 27% from Europe, 21% from Latin America, and 8% from MENA,” according to its founder Pavel Durov.
“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,” he added.
Telegram boasts a ton of features including Scheduled Messages, Profile Videos, improved People Nearby section, Mini Thumbnails, Filtering New Chats From Non-Contacts, Group Stats, Android extras (revamped music player, improved message input bar, cropping and rotating videos), multiple accounts on Telegram Desktop and the app and More Animated Emojis.
Last month, Telegram got a new update that brought voice chats. You will now be able to convert any Telegram group to voice chat room.
The Voice Chats will co-exist with existing text and media-based communication and members of the group chat will be able to quickly jump in an out of the conversation.
Groups with an active voice chat will show a special bar at the top with a join button that lets its members take part in the voice chat with a single tap.
Another rival app, Signal also saw a growth in users reporting a 4,200% surge in new users with 7.5 million app downloads.
Signal ranks at the top of the Apple App Store in 40 countries and on the Google Play Store in 18 countries.
