After WhatsApp announced a more Facebook-friendly privacy policy, tech billionaire Elon Musk nonchalantly suggested using a more secure, encrypted messaging service. As the Apple App Store and Google Play rankings show, people followed Musk’s advice.
Musk’s tweet appeared early last Thursday with just two words: ‘Use Signal. “This has triggered a download storm for the WhatsApp alternative. As users have long noticed, more and more notifications are appearing about new users joining the messaging app. With so many new downloads, there has even been a wait.
The information from the app analysis firm Apptopia shows that there were 63,345 Signal app downloads around the world on Thursday alone, after the tweet. The previous day there were 45,086 downloads. It’s on both iOS and Android devices.
But it took a full day before Musk’s proposal really succeeded. The day after the Elon tweet, Signal downloaded a record number of downloads: about 90,000. Before that, the highest download day for Signal was on June 1 amid Black Lives Matter protests.
Over the weekend, Signal topped the number one app in the entire App Store for iOS devices. It’s Monday afternoon still at the top. It had never been above before. For Android users, it was number seven overall, also the highest it has ever been in the Google Play Store.