Huge Facebook outage results in 3 million new signups for Telegram

Facebook suffered the worst outage since inception yesterday affecting users across the platform and other services including WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. Users reported not being able to post, comment, like, or text using their accounts. The Menlo Park-giant confirmed on Twitter that it was not a cyber attack as some speculated but was due a 'server configuration change'.

Yesterday, as a result of a server configuration change, many people had trouble accessing our apps and services. We’ve now resolved the issues and our systems are recovering. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate everyone’s patience."

User's may be glad with Facebook's official response but businesses that run their ad campaigns on the platform could have had a significant loss of exposure. In case you are not aware, Facebook controls 22 percent of the digital advertising market and makes an estimated US$90 million a day of advertising revenue so yesterday's downtime will definitely have significant ramifications. 

Apparently, the outage proved to be a blessing for some businesses. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov claimed that in the last 24 hours, 3 million users have signed up for Telegram. He said,

I see 3 million new users signed up for Telegram within the last 24 hours.
Good. We have true privacy and unlimited space for everyone."

Although Durov doesn't take Facebook's name explicitly, his post can be seen as a cheeky snub at the massive social network. Last year, Telegram stated that it had crossed the 200 million monthly active users mark despite restrictions in markets such as Russia, China, and Iran.

Facebook is yet to officially comment on the impact of the issue but Bloomberg reports that Facebook is still assessing the overall situation and is open to the "possibility of refunds for advertisers".