With Facebook Outage, Rival Telegram Says It Saw A Record 70 Million New User Sign-Ups In A Single Day

Instant messaging platform Telegram, a rival to Facebook Inc FB-owned WhatsApp, said on Tuesday it added over 70 million new users on Monday.

What Happened: Telegram founder Pavel Durov said the company’s daily growth rate exceeded the norm by an order of magnitude as social media users rushed to try out other options amid the outage of Facebook services.

Durov said the platform was able to handle the unprecedented growth as the service worked "flawlessly for the vast majority" of its users. He noted that some users in the Americas experienced slower speed than usual as millions of users from these continents rushed to sign up for Telegram at the same time.

See Also: Elon Musk-Backed Signal Struggles To Catch Up With Demand As Millions Flock To Its App Amid Facebook Chaos

Durov welcomed users on Telegram and said the independent messaging platform is light years ahead of the competition. 

“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.” Durov said on his Telegram channel.

Why It Matters: Facebook’s nearly six-hour global outage hit 3.5 billion users spread across its network of WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger on Monday. The outage forced social media giant's users to switch to rivals messaging options that include Telegram Signal; the latter is backed by Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk. 

Signal on Tuesday said it added millions of new users and faced some glitches as signups soared suddenly.

Price Action: Facebook shares closed 2.06% higher at $332.96 a share on Tuesday.