Telegram And Signal Continue To Experience Growth Due To WhatsApp User Migration

Adam AY

JAKARTA - WhatsApp decided to implement a new privacy policy on its platform as of May 15. This makes its users migrate to competing platforms such as Signal and Telegram.

Of course, the number of Signal and Telegram users is growing every day. From a report by analytics firm App Annie cited by The Guardian, Sunday, May 23, during the first three weeks of January 2021, Signal gained 7.5 million users globally. While Telegram gets 25 million new users.

However, WhatsApp freefalls from the top row of most downloaded apps. For example, the UK, the Facebook-owned app jumped from eighth to 23rd place on 12 January 2021.

Signal, which was initially not included in the top 1,000 apps in the UK on 6 January, was just three days away on 9 January, the most downloaded in the country.

Meanwhile, according to Sensor Tower data cited from Business of Apps, in the first four months of 2021, Signal's download count grew 1,192 percent year-on-year (YoY) to 64.4 million worldwide. Meanwhile, Telegram's download jumped 98 percent YoY to more than 161 million.

Unfortunately, WhatsApp globally slumped 43 percent YoY to 172.3 million in the period January to April 2021. After soaring at the beginning of the year, Telegram and Signal downloads began to stabilize.

Both apps experienced the biggest spike in downloads during January 2021 after WhatsApp's new privacy policy was announced. Downloads to Signal jumped 5.001 percent during January and the app continues to experience consistent download growth worldwide.

Director of Market Insights App Annie, Amir Ghodrati stated, as for this type of switching in messaging apps and social networks is not unusual.

"The development can often move quite quickly, based on current events. We've seen an increasing demand over the last few years for encrypted messages and privacy-focused apps," Ghodarti said.

Ghodrati added that a shift to a more privacy-focused messaging app had been built before the WhatsApp case. Messaging apps that provide privacy features experienced the largest growth in engagement in the first half of 2020.

On the other hand, WhatsApp's director of public policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Niamh Sweeney, told the home affairs committee that the migration was believed to be linked to the renewal of the company's terms of service.

Sweeney reassured that WhatsApp's privacy update was intended to do two things: enable a new set of features around business messaging, and provide greater transparency around the company's pre-existing policies, "There's no change to our data sharing with Facebook anywhere in the world," Sweeney said.