Pavel Durov, the Russian founder of secure messaging Telegram, said on Tuesday that more than 70 million users have joined the app, the result of a massive outage that hit its rival Facebook’s app.

“We have welcomed over 70 million refugees from other platforms in just one day”, Pavel Durov wrote on his Telegram account, referring to the “record increase in the number of registrations”.

The 36-year-old Russian founder continued, “I am proud of our team that has managed this phenomenal development as Telegram continues to run smoothly for most of our users.”

Telegram messaging fell from 56th place to 5th among the most downloaded free applications in the United States on Monday, according to specialist firm SensorTower.

In January 2021, Telegram had already garnered 25 million users after WhatsApp announced it was sharing more and more of its data with its parent company Facebook.