Telegram, a freeware, cross-platform, cloud-based instant messaging software and application service which provides end-to-end encrypted video calling, VoIP, file sharing and several other features, said it has gained 25 million users in 72hours and surpassed 500 million monthly active users, in the first week of January.
These new users are from across the globe – 38% from Asia, 27% from Europe, 21% from Latin America and 8% from MENA.
WhatsApp, which unveiled a new policy that allows increased data sharing with Facebook last week, has 4 billion users globally.
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“This is a significant increase compared to last year, when 1.5M new users signed up every day. We’ve had surges of downloads before, throughout our 7-year history of protecting user privacy. But this time is different,” said Telegram’s CEO and Founder Pavel Durov in a recent blogpost.
He said people no longer want to exchange their privacy for free services, and 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.
“You – our users – have been and will always be our only priority. Unlike other popular apps, Telegram doesn’t have shareholders or advertisers to report to. We don’t do deals with marketers, data miners or government agencies,” he added.
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