Telegram founder says over 70 million new users joined during Facebook outage

A 3D printed Telegram logo is pictured on a keyboard in front of binary code in this illustration taken September 24, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Messaging app Telegram gained over 70 million new users during Monday's Facebook outage, its founder Pavel Durov said on Tuesday, as people worldwide were left without key messaging services for nearly six hours.

Facebook blamed its outage, which kept its 3.5 billion users from accessing services such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, on a faulty configuration change.