- WhatsApp’s announcement led to an exodus of users.
- Telegram crossed 500 million active monthly users after the announcement.
- Signal also crossed the 50-million mark shortly after.
It’s just getting started, but 2021 feels like it will be a critical year for social applications. WhatsApp, the most popular app in the world, has just announced improvements to its privacy policy. Soon it will expand the power of Facebook to use users’ details. Meanwhile, this week, one of the most notorious applications in the world, Parler, was unceremoniously dumped on the internet. Unsurprisingly, that’s fantastic news for Telegram, the competing chat app.
Although Telegram and Signal seem to be the most common of all, there are a bunch to choose from. The latter surpassed the 50-million mark on the Google Play Store shortly after the former added 25 million users in 72 hours.
Signal’s growth after WhatsApp’s announcement:
Signal is an encrypted messaging service that the likes of Edward Snowden and Elon Musk have endorsed. It also encrypts all forms of communication compared to services such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. These include voice calls, video calls, and messages.
The app crossed the 50-million mark shortly after it topped app store charts around the world. It gained traction after users took to social media to criticize the new strategy of WhatsApp. According to research firm Apptopia, around 810,000 users globally installed Signal on Sunday, January 10 alone.
The encrypted messaging service is also actively working on expanding its features. It is adding features to keep up with newly arriving users from the feature-rich WhatsApp. The community call limit has recently risen from five to eight. It is also in the process of rolling out features including chat wallpapers and animated stickers.
Telegram’s future plans:
In the last 72 hours, Telegram added 25 million new users as it smashed past the 500 million active monthly user mark, according to founder and CEO Pavel Durov. For instance, in 2020, the app averaged around 1.5 million new users a day, which was already impressive enough. Durvov says that, above all, this is due to his company’s simple pledge of privacy and protection.
Recently, Telegram outlined its revenue earning plans but vowed privacy for users would not be affected. Ads can only be used on one-to-many platforms and corporations and power users will be targeted with paid premium features. Anything you use for free at present will stay free. Earlier this month, as it turned out the nearby feature of the app could be used to find out a user’s exact position rather than an estimated one, there was a slight dispute, but this comes with the territory of an opt-in location sharing feature-use at your own risk.
