Late on Friday (March 19) night, as soon as WhatsApp, Instagram, and even Facebook, began experiencing an outage in several parts of the world, messaging app Signal took to Twitter to “welcome everyone”.

Signal, which has projected itself as WhatsApp's substitute, tweeted on its official handle, stating that its registrations had seen a significant spike while people struggled to establish connections with their near and dear ones on WhatsApp.

In the tweet, Signal said that its registrations had gone “through the roof”, especially during the time there was an outage on WhatsApp. It also expressed “solidarity” with those “working on the WhatsApp outage”.

Signal ended the tweet with the message that those not associated with the tech industry “will never understand how weird it sounds when someone says that they are ‘looking forward to some weekend downtime’”.

Signal registrations are through the roof; welcome everyone! Solidarity to the folks working on the WhatsApp outage. People outside of the tech industry will never understand how weird it sounds when someone says that they are "looking forward to some weekend downtime.

— Signal (@signalapp) March 19, 2021Twitter was abuzz late on Friday night with just one question from users: “Is WhatsApp down?” Some of them asked if Instagram was down too. Messages, as well as media, were not getting delivered on WhatsApp, while Instagram users complained that they couldn’t refresh their feed.

Initially, there was no clarity on the reasons for the outage, but most of the services were restored within an hour. Citing an unspecified “technical issue” for the outages, a Facebook spokesperson said the glitch had been fixed.

Apologising for the “trouble”, Instagram, too, tweeted with the hashtag ‘instagramdown’, and stated that its service has been restored.

Some people were having issues with their Instagram accounts earlier, but we're back now. The issue's been fixed and we're sorry for the trouble. #instagramdown pic.twitter.com/dd9mJPiqDz

— Instagram (@instagram) March 19, 2021

Signal grew in popularity earlier this year, following the privacy concerns on WhatsApp and its new controversial policy, which initially had come with a short deadline. The Facebook-owned platform then extended the deadline, but many users, including celebrities, influencers, and business tycoons, urging people to migrate to Signal.

Among those who came forward and endorsed Signal were Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, the chairman of Mahindra Group, Anand Mahindra, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma and billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya among others.

Use Signal

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021

❤️ pic.twitter.com/uewq6oP7rT

— jack (@jack) January 10, 2021

Have installed Signal messaging. Maybe soon there will be a #signalwonderbox

— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) January 10, 2021

They say, market has power. We are the largest market.Here in India WhatsApp / Facebook are abusing their monopoly & taking away millions of users' privacy for granted.We should move on to @signalapp NOW.It is upto us to become victim or reject such moves. https://t.co/iCmKoyLc5x

— Vijay Shekhar Sharma (@vijayshekhar) January 11, 2021

Starting in Feb, WhatsApp will begin sharing all kinds of data with Facebook. They just killed their best feature - privacy.

Please no longer text me on WhatsApp. Download @signalapp— Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath) January 10, 2021

Signal says its emphasis is on the significance of privacy and the safety of user data. In the past, it has taken digs at WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, who have been accused of stealing the user data.

Stay private every day of the week, not just on The Weeknd. pic.twitter.com/gDOflNvG9S

— Signal (@signalapp) February 8, 2021