Telegram, the messenger app similar to WhatsApp, got a boost on Saturday after WhatsApp went down for several hours.
More than 6,000 people were signing up for the service per minute, the company said.
“This is crazy. We’are getting 100 new registrations every second.
Trying hard to prevent connection issues in Europe,” Telegram said on Twitter.
It later said that it’s service went down as well due to the demand.
“The SMS gateways we use to send registration codes are overloaded
and slow — 100 SMS per second is too much. Trying to find a solution,”
Telegram wrote on its Twitter account at around 3:50 p.m. ET.
The app can be downloaded on the Google Play website and Apple’s App Store.
Some reviewers prefer the app to WhatsApp, which was recently acquired by Facebook.
“Love the simplicity and speed of this app, with the security/privacy
aspects being the best selling points that other messaging apps never
seem to address. Only reason I don’t consider it truly five stars just
yet is that the date and time stamp are off for me by an entire day
(which can get confusing), and an option to invite by email would be
especially convenient,” one reviewer wrote.
The developers say the app is focused on speed and security.
“For those interested in maximum privacy, we’ve added Secret Chats,
featuring end-to-end encryption to ensure that a message can only be
read by its intended recipient. When it comes to Secret Chats, nothing
is logged on our servers and you can automatically program the messages
to self-destruct from both devices so there is never any record of it,” a
description for Telegram reads.