Facebook's outage helps Telegram gain 30 lakh new users

Facebook has blamed the 'server configuration change' for the outage that saw Telegram, Facebook's under-recognised competitor, gain as many as 30 lakh new signups. Yesterday, Facebook and its other services like WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger were down for over 14 hours. The magnitude of the outage was bigger than ever before several people were affected.

Users of Facebook were unable to post anything and the desktop version of the Messenger was not loading either. Similar issues were noticed with WhatsApp, where the users were unable to send images. The issue also affected Workplace and Oculus. The outage affected users in the US, Europe, South America, Australia and Asia, according to a map by Down Detector.

Facebook has said that the server configuration change "triggered a cascading series of issues" for its platforms. The company has also denied that it was a victim of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

Yesterday, as a result of a server configuration change, many people had trouble accessing our apps and services. We've now resolved the issues and our systems are recovering. We're very sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate everyone's patience.

- Facebook (@facebook) March 14, 2019

Meanwhile, Facebook's loss turned out to be Telegram's gain. Due to the Facebook's long outage where its messaging platforms were also unusable, Telegram reportedly saw 3 million new users signing up for its services.

"I see 3 million new users signed up for Telegram within the last 24 hours," Telegram boss CEO Pavel Durov posted on his Telegram channel. "Good. We have true privacy and unlimited space for everyone."

Telegram is a cloud-based mobile and desktop messaging app with a focus on security. The platform announced last year that it had passed 200 million monthly active users mark.

Earlier in the month, Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg spoke about the importance of private messaging and outlined his privacy focussed vision for social networking. "I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today's open platforms. Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves and connect more naturally, which is why we build social networks", Zuckerberg had written in his post.

Edited By: Udit Verma

Also Read: Facebook wants to become a 'private' messaging platform like WhatsApp