Telegram, a popular chat messenger for folks who love functionality over popularity, has just crossed the 500 million downloads mark on Google Play Store. This is, of course, still a far cry from what other competitors have already achieved in space, for instance, Facebook-owned WhatsApp’s 5 Billion downloads.
But what is there to celebrate about the platform’s journey is that it’s only relied on user downloads, no preloading. Plus, Telegram’s API has also been used by other applications like Telegram X and Plus Messenger, which are both available on Google Play and have amassed over 10 million downloads each.
The journey to 500m has been rough. Since inception in 2013, Telegram has already been banned in countries like Russia, Iran, Ethiopia, Pakistan for the platform’s privacy-conscious nature.
Those fights, however, haven’t stopped Telegram from blossoming. Just recently, Telegram announced that it has 400 million monthly users. The company says at least 1.5 million new users sign up on the platform every day.
Commemorating the 400m milestone, Telegram has done the most Telegram thing again – rolling out more features.
Although Telegram has been known as one of the best feature-rich platforms, that hasn’t deterred the team from adding even more. Telegram recently added a new attachment menu, made some incremental updates to the Quizzes, and added a new way to search the 20,000-sticker database easily.
Via/AP
