Influences FinTechMay 13, 2015May 19, 2015

Telegram Says It’s Hit 62M MAUs And Messaging Activity Has Doubled

TECHCRUNCH: Telegram, the multi-platform messaging app startup created by Pavel Durov (who previously created and later departed VK, the ‘Russian Facebook’ amid controversy), has released its latest numbers exclusively to TechCrunch.

Telegram now says it is delivering 2 billion messages daily. In other words, that’s double the number of messages sent daily since they last released figures in December 2014. Co-founder Durov also told me that the platform has hit 62 million Monthly Active Users (up from 50m in December).

There’s still a long way to go however. Last month WhatsApp said its users numbers had broken 800 million active users, nearly doubling its user base over the past year, since it was acquired by Facebook for $19 billion.

I asked Durov if that meant user growth was slowing, as it’s only 12 million more in 4 months.

He disagrees: “The big deal is growth in user activity. Our active users increased by 15 million in the 9 months from March 2014 to Dec 2014 (from 35m to 50m). Now it’s taken only 5 months to get another 12m users.

He added that the current signup rate is now over 220,000 new users daily, with an increase from 145,000 daily signups in early December 2014.

Back in December, the startup claimed to have hit over 50 million monthly active users and 23 million daily users, who were sending 1 billion messages daily. In March last year, Telegram said it had 35 million monthly active users, 15 million of whom used it daily, with 18 billion messages monthly, 600 million messages daily.

Telegram seems to have garnered most of its popularity in Europe, Latin America, India, Arab countries and South East Asia. It definitely got a lift when Facebook acquired WhatsApp last year, leading to concerned over messaging privacy inside Facebook.

Telegram markets itself as a secure, encrypted platform, although not every InfoSec expert agrees with that. Suffice it to say, it’s clear Telegram’s users like the fact they can sync their Telegram mobile messages with Telegram’s desktop and tablet apps. Whatsapp still does not have a desktop product. This is likely to make it more attractive to business workers generally.