WhatsApp on New Year’s eve set single day record with 1.4 billion voice and video calls, making it the most ever calls in a single day on the platform.
This is even as people increasingly turned to technology to stay in touch and get things done in the face of social distancing and stay-at-home mandates in 2020.
According to Facebook, owners of WhatsApp, calling on the app increased by over 50% compared to the same day last year.
On Facebook Messenger, people celebrated with effects, and the top AR effect in the US was “2020 Fireworks”.
“New Year’s Eve 2020 was the biggest day ever for Messenger group video calls (3+ people) in the US, with nearly 2X more group video calls on NYE compared to the average day.
“There were more than 55 million live broadcasts across Facebook and Instagram globally on New Year’s Eve,” the social media platform stated.
Facebook said it’s engineers worked hehind the scenes to drive unprecedented efficiency improvements and make sure infrastructures were more resilient.
“Before COVID-19, New Year’s Eve generated Facebook’s biggest spikes in messaging, photo uploads and social sharing at midnight across the world.
“However, in March 2020, the early days of the pandemic produced traffic spikes that would dwarf New Year’s Eve several times over — and it lasted for months. Behind the scenes, Facebook Engineering came together to drive unprecedented efficiency improvements and make our infrastructure more resilient.
“This work includes load testing, disaster recovery testing and shuffling capacity. This year, New Year’s Eve looked a lot different, and we had engineering teams across Facebook’s apps, ready to support any issue, so the world could ring in 2021,” Caitlin Banford, technical program manager at Facebook stated.