- Instant messaging Application Telegram which is a rival to Whatsapp has crossed 400 million monthly active users globally
Instant messaging Application Telegram, a rival of WhatsApp, has 400 million monthly active users worldwide, it said on Monday. A year ago the app attracted 100 million new users and built its user base on the promise of secure messaging. Recently WhatsApp said it has 2 billion users around the world.
“1.5 million new users sign up for Telegram every day,” the company reported in a blog post. It also reported Telegram is the number one social media app most used in over 20 countries. Telegram has partnered with ministries and governments in 17 countries around the world to launch various anti-COVID 19 initiatives.
The firm has a partnership with the Indian government, launching the MyGov Corona Newsdesk which provides users with verified news and updates.
The business also focused on the platform’s safe video chat functionality to cash in on the growing popularity of video chat applications due to the worldwide COVID-19 lockdown. “Applications are either stable or accessible but not both. We’d like to address that, and we’re going to concentrate on having you safe video community calls in 2020, “the company said in its blog post.
However, it won’t be easy for Telegram to gain users for community video. Proven applications such as Zoom, Skype, and more already have user mileage. Furthermore, Facebook recently introduced a new application for video chat, called Messenger Rooms, and increased the number of people allowed on WhatsApp’s community video feature to eight out of four.
By promising protection, Telegram built its user base. The organization was also known to take firm positions against censorship and has also spoken out publicly against many governments around the world.
Rather than expanding its user base, Telegram also introduced several new features, which include a newly added Quiz Mode and a new Android user attachment interface.
Telegram competes with hundreds of common instant messaging services like WhatsApp which has accumulated more than 2 billion users worldwide. When Facebook-owned service faces an outage, Telegram also sees a spike in its user base. Durov is one of WhatsApp’s most outspoken critics too.
Telegram’s mobile software, which doesn’t allow the phone to connect to the internet to function, and a variety of apps like files and cloud storage have gained a loyal group of users from it.