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Facebook's loss may be Telegram's gain.

The founder of the messaging service said Thursday that people flocked to Telegram during the long Facebook outage that knocked out not only its namesake social network, but also corporate siblings Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram.

"I see 3 million new users signed up for Telegram within the last 24 hours," Telegram boss CEO Pavel Durov wrote. "Good. We have true privacy and unlimited space for everyone."

Telegram reported that it had 200 million active users this time last year, so Wednesday's gain is a reasonable jump for the service. Last April, it was banned in Russia, Durov's home country, sparking protests on the streets of Moscow.

Telegram didn't immediately respond to a request for further comment.