Telegram audience in Russia exceeded 50 million people on the day of WhatsApp failure

On October 25, when the WhatsApp messenger was temporarily unavailable due to a failure, the Telegram audience among Russian citizens over 12 years old exceeded 50 million people, Kommersant was told in Mediascope. Telegram’s daily audience reached this mark for the first time since October 1, 2021. By October 28, the figure dropped to 47.7 million people, the week before (October 22) it was 45.7 million.

The daily audience of WhatsApp among Russians over 12 years old increased from 22 to 28 October from 72.2 million to 74.6 million people, respectively. On the day of the failure, it amounted to 73.7 million people.

Mediascope found it difficult to say whether Telegram on October 25 reached the record for the audience in a day for the entire time of observations. The company cited that historical data is incomparable due to improvements in technology. At the same time, analysts noted an increase in the average daily audience of Telegram: for the period from October 1 to October 25, it amounted to 46.7 million people against 43.8 million in the same period of September. The average daily audience of WhatsApp for the same periods decreased slightly: from 73.7 million to 73.5 million.

WhatsApp failed on the morning of October 25 Moscow time, the messenger was unavailable to users from all over the world for two hours. Meta (owner of WhatsApp; the company’s Facebook and Instagram activities are banned in Russia as extremist) notedthat the causes of the problems were on the side of the messenger. WhatsApp’s problems were the biggest since October 2021, when all Facebook services were down for almost six hours.

Yuri Litvinenko