Global social media giant Facebook has revealed that its cross-platform messaging service WhatsApp managed more than 1.4 billion voice and video calls on New Year’s Eve, the highest single-day total on the platform.
The firm shared that as the pandemic restricted friends and family from meeting each other, WhatsApp witnessed a 50 percent rise in calling when compared to the same day last year.
Sharing her insights about the drastic change which has been brought in by the pandemic to Facebook’s various social platforms, it’s Technical Programme Manager Ms. Caitlin Banford observed that “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,”
“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,” the senior official at the social media platform shared.
As per the data with the service, its users celebrate the occasion with effects in Messenger while the most used AR (augmented reality) effect in the US was “2020 Fireworks.”
Facebook Messenger, another messaging service offering by the firm had its highest number of Messenger group video calls with more than 3 people in the US on the day. The New Year’s Eve of 2020 brought in close to 200 percent more group video calls compared to an average day on service.
The social media giant shared that more than 55 million live broadcasts were hosted on its Facebook and Instagram platforms on New Year’s Eve.
