Telegram, another messaging platform similar to Whatsapp, gained ground on its rivals after Facebook faced a six-hour outage on Monday. The company added over 70 million new users in a single day. The founder of the company, Pavel Durov said in a post in his own channel, "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." It doesn't take a long time to guess what Durov referred to as "other platforms." WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger, all three social media platforms were down, making the users shift to another boat. Facebook's outage uncannily coincided with the controversial appearance of Frances Haugen, a former product manager of the civic misinformation team of the company who alleged the company of prioritizing personal profit over public safety live on CBS the day before. While many pundits didn't take time to join the dots, Facebook said that the server breakdown was due to a faulty configuration change. Facebook Vice President Infrastructure Santosh Janardhan said, "We apologize to all those affected, and we're working to understand more about what happened today so we can continue to make our infrastructure more resilient." The Journal also added that apart from 3.5 billion people staying disconnected from the platforms, the outage also resulted in scheduling issues in multiple office spaces that use Facebook or WhatsApp for setting up meetings. Durov added that his platform also suffered from a clogged server due to so many people signing up. He said, "I am proud of how our team handled the unprecedented growth because Telegram continued to work flawlessly for the vast majority of our users. That said, some users in the Americas may have experienced slower speed than usual as millions of users from these continents rushed to sign up for Telegram at the same time." But the 36-year-old didn't fail to taunt the tech giants. Throwing shades at Facebook, he said "For the new users I'd like to say this - welcome to Telegram, the largest independent messaging platform. We won't fail you when others will." In a gentle host-like manner, Durov added, "I ask our existing users to say hi to their newly arrived friends, help them unpack, and let them know what we have in stock. Make sure they stick around and see why Telegram is light years ahead of the competition." Telegram has been feasting on the controversies of Facebook as most of the users of the platform started to switch after Facebook's privacy breach incident came to the fore. While Telegram also offers video calling and live streaming features, it is yet to be end-to-end encrypted. Another app that gained from the outage is Signal. A long-time advocate of the app, former NSA and CIA officer and whistleblower, Edward Snowden, said, "Facebook-owned Whatsapp being down is a reminder that you and your friends should probably be using a more private, non-profit alternative like @Signalapp anyway. It's just as free, and takes like 30 seconds to switch."
For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com
Business News
April 17, 2026 15:29 ET The ongoing conflict in the Middle East continues to raise concerns for policymakers who worry about the impact of the supply shock and high energy prices on the real economy. Producer price data and various survey results on the housing market were the main news from the U.S. this week. In Europe, industrial production data for the euro area gained attention. GDP figures out of China and the policy move by the Singapore central bank were in focus in Asia.