Signal is a privacy-focused and encrypted messaging app developed by a startup company founded by security researcher Moxie Marlinspike and roboticist Stuart Anderson.
While the app was already benefiting from its huge number of users, the number and the influence it had were far from WhatsApp, the messaging app owned by Facebook.
But following WhatsApp's privacy policy update that aims to allow it to share data with Facebook, a number of people started to migrate from WhatsApp to alternatives, including Signal.
And following an endorsement tweet from serial tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, who was just named the richest man on Earth, the Signal app started seeing a swell in new users signing up to the platform.
Use Signal
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021
Musk who just surpassed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in net worth, tweeted a meme criticizing Facebook for its role in helping protestors to storm the U.S. Capitol.
With the two concurrences, Signal was benefited.
The number of new registration was so huge that the company is seeing delays in phone number verifications of new accounts across multiple cell providers.
Verification codes are currently delayed across several providers because so many new people are trying to join Signal right now (we can barely register our excitement). We are working with carriers to resolve this as quickly as possible. Hang in there.
— Signal (@signalapp) January 7, 2021
These have created the perfect moment in which WhatsApp users appear to be migrating in large numbers to join Signal, a nonprofit-run encrypted messaging app that is not owned by money-oriented or ad-powered tech company.
Previously, the end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal was also endorsed by the likes of NSA former contractor Edward Snowden.
It should be noted though, that Musk's tweet wasn't made in coincidence. The Tesla CEO's opinions on the social media giant are already well known.
Musk isn't a fan on Facebook, and that has been a fact for a long time.
Facebook sucks
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2020
It’s not a political statement and I didn’t do this because someone dared me to do it. Just don’t like Facebook. Gives me the willies. Sorry.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2018
Musk's endorsement not only increased the interest of people in using the Signal app, as the somehow ambiguous tweet that simply said "Use Signal" made a number of hungry investors trying to make a profit jump on shares of SIGL stock, which is from the company Signal Advance that has nothing to do with the Signal app.
Signal Advance is a tech company that focuses on reducing delays in devices that rely on analog signals.
The company experienced its stock’s daily average trading volume of around 10,000 shares. Following Musk's tweet, the company saw more than 447,000 shares in one day.