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Instant messaging service
Telegram
has amassed 400 million monthly active users, it said today, up from 300 million active users the seven-year-old service disclosed to the SEC last October.
The service — founded by
Pavel Durov,
who also created Russian social networking site VK — said it adds about 1.5 million users each day and is the most downloaded social media app in over 20 nations.
Telegram is working on bringing secure video call feature to its users this year in response to the growing popularity of Zoom and Houseparty, it said. The company, headquartered in London and Dubai, however, did not talk about the future of its
Gram cryptocurrency wallet and TON Blockchain
that it had revealed in 2018, but put on hold early this year
.
“As the gap in popularity between Telegram and its older competitors narrows, we find more and more validity in that original assumption,” the firm said in a blog post.
Telegram competes with dozens of popular instant messaging services including
that has amassed over 2 billion users globally
. Telegram often sees a surge in its user base when Facebook-owned service is facing an outage. Durov is one of the most vocal critics of WhatsApp
.
Its desktop app, which does not require the phone to be connected to the internet for function, and a range of features including folders and cloud storage have won it a loyal set of users.
These features have also given rise to misuse of its platform with at least hundreds of thousands of its users relying on the service to
distribute and download illegal copies of movies, songs, and applications
. Its piracy issue remains prevalent today.
Telegram today revealed a sticker directory that lists over 20,000 stickers, and detailed a handful of improvements such as a new attachment menu on
Android
. The firm also said it was creating a database of educational tests for students, and plans to distribute 400,000 Euro to creators for creating those tests.
TechCrunch learned last week that the service had reached the 400 million users milestone, but at the time Telegram did not respond to a request for comment.
