Telegram, a messaging app that emphasizes privacy and security, added millions of new users Sunday, following WhatsApp's biggest outage in years.
The spike in downloads pushed the app to the No. 4 position in the App Store Sunday and the app was the No. 1 iPhone app in 48 countries, according to the company.
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Earlier in the week, the company reported it had added more than one million new users within days of Facebook's $19 billion WhatsApp acquisition. On Saturday afternoon, an issue with WhatsApp's network routers caused the service to go down for three hours.
The outage appears to have boosted Telegram's downloads considerably. By Sunday afternoon, the company was reporting it had added 4.95 million users on that day alone.
4.95 million people signed up for Telegram today. Telegram is #1 most downloaded iPhone app in 48 countries. To the bad news...— Telegram Messenger (@telegram) February 24, 2014
The sudden influx of users-- new users were registering at a rate of 100 new user per second, the company tweeted-- caused the service to have its own connection issues in Europe.
Due to the insane growth rate our cluster in Europe experienced a 2-hour downtime today. We are adding servers, but it takes time.— Telegram Messenger (@telegram) February 24, 2014
Telegram's messaging platform was created by Nikolai and Pavel Durov, the two brothers behind Russia's largest social network, VK.
On its website, the company says it sets itself apart from WhatsApp and other messaging platforms by emphasizing security, speed and keeping its services free.
Unlike WhatsApp, Telegram is cloud-based and heavily encrypted. As a result, you can access your messages from several devices (including desktops!) and share an unlimited number of photos, videos and documents (doc, zip, mp3, etc). Thanks to our multi-data center infrastructure and encryption, Telegram is also faster and way more secure.
The two founders say they are not interested in making any money from the app and have no future plans to sell the app, accept investments or charge users for its services.
Telegram is available in the iOS App Store and Google Play.