蘑菇AV

The news: Cybersecurity researchers discovered 16 billion leaked login credential files across 30 previously unreported data sets. It鈥檚 considered the biggest data breach in history, affecting major platforms including Facebook, Google, Apple, GitHub, Telegram, and US government services, per Fortune. Our take: With billions of credentials now on the loose, marketers should treat brand systems as compromised. Auditing accounts, enforcing password resets, and demanding stricter multifactor or QR-code based methods are necessary safeguards. The cost of prevention pales compared to recovering from compromised campaigns, stolen customer data, and ransomware resulting in damaged brand reputation.

Transparency around how XChat鈥檚 encryption works or plans for its data are necessary, or privacy-conscious users may stick with more established platforms like Signal or Telegram. This content is part of 蘑菇AV鈥檚 subscription Briefings, where we pair daily updates with data and analysis from forecasts and research reports.

But despite its sudden popularity, Signal鈥檚 user base is still far behind competing messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, WeChat, and Discord. A heated debate on security: The Signalgate incident surfaced how encrypted tools like Signal are used in government communications. Government officials defended the app鈥檚 use, calling it standard for secure communication.

Finding an audience: BuzzFeed is entering a crowded social media market, though consumer interest in non-legacy platforms like Bluesky, Telegram, and Threads is growing. Still, those newer platforms are struggling to differentiate their identity and niche, which could be a problem for BF Island.

Pentagon breach is a new low for social media: A classified document leak on Discord, Telegram, and Twitter has serious geopolitical implications. If platforms don鈥檛 take action, public sentiment might flatline.

Meta gained a strong hold over the US social media app rankings last year, with Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook all boasting the highest numbers of downloads, according to Apptopia. Messaging app Telegram broke into the top 10 this year, as did relative newcomer BeReal.

"In 2025 we are going to see brands think community-first,鈥� according to Jennifer Quigley-Jones, CEO of Digital Voices. One place they will do this is on Instagram Broadcast Channels, the one-to-many messaging feature that allows users to directly engage with followers. As of last week, subscribers of the exclusive direct messaging (DM) channels can now communicate with the creators and brands they follow, similar to how they might use Discord or Patreon.

Telegram stated that it had 41 million users in the EU as of February and, in lieu of a requested update this month, told regulators it still has 鈥渟ignificantly fewer鈥� than 45 million EU users.

A year before this, he had founded Telegram, running the company from Dubai in the UAE, where he now lives. Telegram is the world's eighth largest social media messaging platform, says the Economist, popular in India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, and the Ukraine, as well as other countries, with a self-reported 1 billion monthly active users worldwide.

And with the case of the Telegram CEO being arrested last month, one of the points they were making is that a platform shouldn't be liable for misuse, the user should be liable for their own misuse. I think that the bill is teetering on either edge. You need to be able to create a model that will not allow those things to happen. Marcus Johnson:.