Signal grew 5x in one day[1]. A week before Musk amplified the WhatsApp story with his "Use Signal"[2] tweet. It then did the rounds on MSM. WhatsApp shoots itself in the foot (though IMO it's a blip in their stats). Parler (thankfully) has been kicked off AWS. All good news for alternative messaging technology.

https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1349577579091566592

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1347165127036977153

edit: as daniel_sk points out this is not a x5 increase but crossing the threshold from 10+ to the next 50+ mm downloads.

Google Play has 10m+ and then 50m+ step. So if you have 40m users then you still are in the 10m+ bracket.

thanks I didn't know this, so it's most probably not a x5 increase but just a cross of this threshold.

I'm a new Signal user myself (maybe six weeks or so). In the past week there's been a huge influx of my contacts joining Signal.

I will continue to use iMessages for my iOS contacts. For SMS people I will gently nudge (hey, have you tried Signal? and then let the convo go where it does) and then use Signal as the primary for those people.

Is SMS still popular in your part of the world? I literally haven't gotten an SMS from a human in the past 9 years. Here in Hong Kong, SMS is how your bank sends notifications, and for spam. The chat space is vastly dominated by Weixin/WeChat and WhatsApp.

United States. I'm 37.

99.9% of messaging (for me) occurs via iMessages or SMS. FB Messenger is occasionally used for people who are more acquaintances (don't have their phone number).

I don't really have a good reason to not use iMessages (blue bubbles). Reasonably secure and Just Works. SMS on the other hand.... my least favorite part of SMS (besides the complete lack of security) is that media messages are crippled in quality. Photos and videos are compressed and distorted beyond belief.

United States too. Same feeling that most messages are iMessage or SMS. But as one of two extended family members with Android against ~10 with iPhones, for me iMessages are pretty horrible. They mostly work most of the time, but frequently there are glitches on glitches. SMS between Android phones are rock solid. Just a single data point.

> SMS between Android phones are rock solid

not just android, they work with every mobile handset even with the poorest reception or (even lack of) data-plan.

i use ~200 sms per year, pretty constant since i got my first mobilephone.

kinda sad we didnt come up with something better thou.

In the U.S. I’ve never had anyone suggest messaging other than SMS, FB, or (long ago) Twitter.

It's an interesting anecdotal-metric. I've seen Telegram to Signal signups at about 5:1 for my contacts.