Telegram boss says messaging app hits 900 million users
The Peninsula
Dubai: The encrypted messaging app Telegram has reached more than 900 million active users and should pass the one billion mark within a year, its bos...
Dubai: The encrypted messaging app Telegram has reached more than 900 million active users and should pass the one-billion mark within a year, its boss said in an interview published Wednesday.
"Telegraph is spreading like a forest fire. Two-and-a-half million users sign up every day," said Pavel Durov, the Russian who founded the company alongside his brother Nikolai, in a rare interview with controversial right-wing US talk show host Tucker Carlson.
People "love the independence. They also love the privacy, the freedom, (there are) a lot of reasons why somebody would switch to Telegram", Durov told Carlson.
The encrypted messaging app, based in Dubai, has positioned itself as an alternative to US-owned platforms, which have been criticised for their commercial exploitation of users' personal data. Telegram has committed itself to never disclosing any information about its users.
Durov said he got the idea to launch an encrypted messaging app after coming under pressure from the Russian government when working at VK, a social network he created in his home country before selling it and leaving Russia in 2014.
