No, not WhatsApp. Telegram. It hit 100 million users

On Tuesday, the CEO of Telegram, an encrypted messaging service, told the audience at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, that the mobile messaging app had surpassed 100 million monthly active users – a 60% increase in 9 months.

The 100 million number is up from a December 2014 disclosure that pegged Telegram at 50 million active users, with TechCrunch comparing the tally to Facebook Messenger’s 800 million and the 1 billion users of Facebook-owned WhatsApp.

Durov broke down the figure and explained that about 38 million users joined the app since May 2015. This extremely high volume of daily message traffic places Telegram far ahead many other means of communication when it comes to user engagement. Do your math and you’ll see that it’s about 150 messages per user, if all active monthly users were also active every day. The evident popularity of Telegram could be more down to its slick design and usability rather than its security as a mobile messaging app. It announced at the MWC that it had passed 100 million MAUs. It uses end-to-end encryption due to which no third-party can intercept the messages of its users.

Telegram launched as an iOS app in August 2013 before becoming available as an Android version three months later in October 2013.

According to Telegram, “Two and a half years ago we launched Telegram”.

Brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, who launched VK (originally called VKontakte) in 2006, began working on Telegram in early 2012 as a research project because they wanted to create something that was “really secure and fun at the same time”.