What is FireChat?
FireChat is an iOS and Android app that lets smartphone and tablet users chat even without a cellular or internet connection. That's why it bills itself as "off-the-grid."
However, it can also be used to chat over the internet, via its "everyone" mode.
The app was developed by a San Francisco-based company calledOpen Garden.
Hong Kong protesters?
The company's co-founder and CEO told the South China Morning Post that100,000 people in Hong Kong had downloaded the app in 24 hours from Sept. 28 to Sept. 29.
"What we're seeing right now is beyond anything we've seen," Christophe Daligault, the marketing officer for Open Garden, told Reuters on Sunday.
According to the Post, protest organizers encouraged demonstrators to download the app after hearing rumours that the Hong Kong government would shut down cellphone networks in the district where the protest was taking place.
Reuters reported that Hong Kong's wireless networks were disrupted Sunday night, possibly from being overloaded.
The app had previously also been used to some extent during internet blackouts in Iran and Iraq earlier this year.
FireChat 'off-the-grid' messaging app: What you need to know - Technology & Science - CBC News:
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