Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram took a massive hit earlier this month when all three services went down for hours. The outage was reportedly caused by an internal error rather than a malicious third-party attack, but regardless, it left millions of users without a way to connect to their social media platforms. The outage is estimated to have cost Facebook $65 million (via Forbes), but the story didn't end here.
During the outage, millions of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram users flocked to other social media platforms looking for an alternative way to connect with their friends, followers, clients, etc. Many took to Twitter, while millions began looking for other social apps. Telegram alone earned roughly 70 million new users thanks to Facebook's issues. The platform only continued to grow since, and late last week, the messaging app reached another milestone.
Telegram exceeds 1 billion Google Play Store downloads
One company's failure can translate into another's success, and Telegram is definitely on the winning side here. The app's download counter at the Google Play Store stood at 500,000,000 downloads not too long ago, but now, that counter exceeds 1,000,000,000 downloads.
Keep in mind that Telegram is also offered as an APK from the developer's official website, and those downloads don't add up to the Play Store counter. Likewise, the 1 billion downloads figure doesn't necessarily mean that there are over 1 billion people using Telegram, but regardless, the app is definitely surging in popularity.
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