The arrest of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov in France is beginning to affect the app’s traction and rating.
On Saturday, the founder was arrested for allegedly permitting criminal activity to thrive on the social app by failing to average messages adequately, significantly in areas involving drug trafficking, cash laundering and the distribution of kid sexual abuse materials (CSAM). Regardless of the considerations raised over the app’s content material, Telegram is at present seeing a rise in downloads, sending it to the No. 2 place on the U.S. App Retailer’s Social Networking charts and boosting its international iOS downloads by 4% up to now.
Telegram’s elevate didn’t occur instantly after Durov’s arrest. That may very well be as a result of many individuals solely discovered of the information after they had been catching up with headlines they missed over the weekend, or as a result of third-party sources for app retailer intelligence are barely delayed in choosing up rating modifications.
App Intelligence agency Appfigures experiences that Telegram didn’t transfer into the No. 2 place on the Social Networking charts on the U.S. App Retailer till 3 a.m. EST on Monday, indicating the elevate the app is receiving is barely now underway. It might be a short-lived bump — as of publication time, the app had already dropped to No. 3. in Social within the U.S., as an example.
Nonetheless, in France, the place Durov was detained, the app jumped to No.1 within the Social Networking class on the App Retailer and have become the No. 3 prime app general.
Within the prime apps chart (which excludes video games), Telegram moved up from No. 18 within the U.S. to No. 8, or a rise in 10 rating positions since Friday. That is its highest rank right here since no less than January 1, 2023, Appfigures mentioned.
Usually, Apple’s App Retailer rankings replicate a mixture of metrics just like the variety of app installs and obtain velocity, amongst different elements.
Nonetheless, the adage that any press is nice press seems to be true, no less than when it comes to Telegram’s visibility on the App Retailer. As customers downloaded the app out of curiosity — and even in help of the founder’s concepts round “free speech” — the app started to climb within the rankings.
Based mostly on a separate evaluation supplied by market intelligence agency Sensor Tower, Telegram’s international downloads on iOS have already seen a 4% enhance day-over-day as of Sunday.
On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron commented that the arrest was because of an “ongoing judicial investigation” and that it could be as much as the judges to rule on the matter. “It is in no way a political decision,” he mentioned.
