Telegram messenger global MAU 2014-2023

As of July 2023, cloud-based mobile messaging app Telegram reported 800 million monthly active users worldwide. Telegram is a chat app launched in 2013 by the brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov. The pair had previously founded the Russian social network VK, which they left when it was taken over by the Mail.ru Group.

Telegram

After the announce that WhatsApp was going to release a new privacy policy update was met with criticism by users, Telegram’s popularity grew, reaching 64 million installs worldwide in January 2021. At the beginning of 2021, downloads of Telegram in the Asia-Pacific region reached approximately 62 million, making up 38 percent of the global downloads for the first quarter 2021. In 2021, the majority of Telegram’s global audience, was comprised by users aged between 25 and 34 years. Among the reasons to use Telegram, 75 percent of the platform’s users reported to“learn the majority of the news from Telegram.”

Telegram security criticism

Despite claiming to be more secure than other mainstream messengers such as LINE or WhatsApp, Telegram has been frequently criticized by industry experts such as German consumer organization Stiftung Warentest or the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). One of the key points of criticism is Telegram’s failure to provide automatic end-to-end encryption (WhatsApp and LINE messenger have end-to-end encryption set up by default).