Monday October 4th was an unlucky day when you relied on Facebook services to communicate. On Monday, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp were inaccessible to users for hours. The problem was eventually resolved, but thousands of people did not have access to some of the most popular internet services for most of the day.
Of course, if your go-to messaging service crashes, you won’t stop sending messages. You can find another messaging app that works. And many seem to be doing that.
Telegram, one of our most popular messaging apps, gained over 70 million users just a day after the Facebook outage. Those 70 million people may not be newly converted Telegram diehards (their move could be temporary or short-lived), but nonetheless, these numbers are amazing.
But Telegram is just one of the recommended alternatives worth using. Signal, an app known for its end-to-end encryption and various privacy features, likely gained a lot of users even during the Facebook outage.
Did you switch to Telegram or Signal during the Facebook / WhatsApp outage? Have you already used one of these services? Or did you just sit by while Zuckerberg crawled around trying to fix his apps? Cast your vote in the poll above; We’d love to hear your opinion.