I mentioned it already in an earlier article but I couldn´t talk about fact apart from the perceived shift in my circles. I said that many people bought the Threema app to replace the by Facebook acquired messenger WhatsApp. The Swiss startup Threema promises that it´s messenger app offers real end-to-end encryption and therefore real security and privacy. Many see this app as a hot if not best alternative to WhatsApp.

The app became popular over night here in Germany as said, since so many people in my circles said “Do you already have Threema installed on your phone?”. But the proof that this messenger app is going to be established here in Germany is that the app stormed the Google Play top fee-based ranking over night too and reached the top place there. But not only this, the app gets a lot of media attention at the moment.

Even if WhatsApp had around 30 million users in Germany, Tech Crunch for example mentioned that it is interesting to see that a massive user base is ready to jump ship and switch to a brand-new service, in this case to Threema. This is due to the fact that people start to take privacy and security very serious in Germany as I mentioned already too in the other article earlier. But Threema got not only media attention by english magazines, the startup got support by many big German news magazines.

The Sueddeutsche states that 200.000 people installed the WhatsApp alternative in a time frame of 24 hours. This is clearly a massive growth rate and a big signal that there is a protest going on against the WhatsApp buyout by Facebook. The German article is written three days ago and they mentioned that Threema had 400.000 users at that time but this might have changed over the last three days. It would be interesting to see the actual numbers of today. But the shift of a huge user base might not be unstoppable anymore. This app seems to go viral here in Germany.

I installed the app today too and talking about a messenger this does only make sense if there are enough people who make the shift too. This was not really a problem and I was astonished that many of my friends said “I installed the app already today.” when made my suggestion to switch to this new messenger. I only had to convince my mother but even she did already hear that most of her friends suggested Threema. Now you know what I mean if I say this app is on a viral trip. If the developers expected something like this?

My last words, I tested the app and I am very happy with the usability and the modern design. It´s a great app and if you know WhatsApp, then you won´t have much problems with Threema. There might be the only difference that Threema is supposed to be much more secure with the true end-to-end encryption. They say only you and the intended recipient can read your messages and there is not even a way that they as the app developers could read your messages. Sounds great and I won´t refuse to reclaim a part of my privacy! That´s probably what many Germans do thought when they heard about Threema.