Facebook’s cross-platform chat app, WhatsApp, recorded a record number of users on New Year’s Eve, as some people smartly chose to celebrate the end of 2020 virtually this year. Because, even if that damn year of Hades is behind us, the covid-19 pandemic is. definitely not.
More than 1.4 billion video and voice calls were made on New Year’s Eve, the largest app in a single day, per day a post on the company blog. While Facebook said New Year’s Eve has historically been the busiest night, it experienced an increase of approximately 50% compared to that time last year.
It was a great day for the company’s other chat app, Facebook Messenger, which saw almost twice as many group video calls compared to the daily average. There were also 55 million live broadcasts via Facebook and Instagram worldwide.
“[I]In March 2020, the early days of the pandemic produced traffic spikes that would cancel out New Year’s Eve several times, and it lasted for months, ”said Caitlin Banford, technical director of the Facebook program. Facebook Engineering has teamed up to drive unprecedented efficiency improvements and make our infrastructure more resilient. ”
Successfully hosting a record number of users on New Year’s Eve is a testament to these months of testing of its enhanced infrastructure and increased traffic to its applications amid widespread blockages.
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“This year, New Year’s Eve looked very different and we had engineering teams in Facebook apps, ready to support any issue, so the world could sound like 2021.”
Who knows, maybe this time next year the world will catch a little less fire and we will be able to celebrate New Year’s Eve in person again. Or maybe we’ll be stuck counting back to the end of 2021 in our underground bunkers after the murder evenings and rodent tornadoes exceed the surface. I guess it’s a 50/50 shot right now.