Telegram ranks second in popularity after WhatsApp

Pavel Durov in his Telegram channel informed that Telegram Messenger has reached the second place in popularity among users.

“In the last 5 years, Telegram has overtaken Facebook* Messenger and has become the most popular cloud messaging app,” wrote Duro, TechNewsSpace reports.

According to him, Telegram is now only losing to WhatsApp, and the gap is shrinking. Durov also noticed “Fear” competitors.

Durov backed his words with data from Fortune magazine, according to which the share in world messaging is 31 per cent. Whatsapp share is 44 per cent and Facebook* Messenger – 21 per cent. The popularity of the latter has started a noticeable decline since 2020, while Telegram, on the contrary, has constantly shown steady growth. And the general peak of instant messenger popularity was recorded in early 2021.

To assess the changes, the Fortune editorial team used 2018 as a comparison, when Whatsapp’s share exceeded 50 per cent and Telegram accounted for only 5 per cent. Facebook* Messenger had a 43 per cent share in 2018.

Brand Analytics, a social media and media monitoring company, conducted a study of social media and instant messenger activity in the fall of 2023. The authors of the study concluded that Telegram saw a record increase in the number of active authors and messages sent across all social networks. Thus, in October 2022, the number of active authors in Telegram increased by 58 per cent, and the growth of daily content was 24 per cent.

* It is included in the list of public associations and religious organizations for which the court made a final decision to liquidate or ban activities on the grounds provided for in Federal Law No. 114-FZ of July 25. 2002 “On Countering Extremist Activities”.