Facebook’s platform chat app WhatsApp saw a record number of users on New Year’s Eve, as some people wisely chose to celebrate end of 2020 virtually this year. Because even though the cursed year of Hades is finally behind us, the covid-19 pandemic is definitely not.
More than 1.4 billion video and voice calls were placed on New Year’s Eve, the app’s most ever in one day, per a company blog blog. While Facebook said New Year’s Eve was historically the busiest night, it rose about 50% compared to this time last year.
It was also a big 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 across Facebook and Instagram worldwide.
‘[I]In March 2020, the early days of the pandemic generated traffic jams that would dwarf New Year’s Eve several times – and it took months, ‘said Caitlin Banford, Facebook’s technical program manager. “Behind the scenes, Facebook Engineering has come together to bring about unprecedented efficiency improvements and make our infrastructure more resilient.”
The successful presentation of a record number of users on New Year’s Eve is proof of those months in which its enhanced infrastructure was tested and that the traffic in its programs was able to withstand amidst widespread locks.
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“This year, New Year’s Eve looked very different, and we had engineering teams in Facebook’s programs, ready to support any issue so the world could ring in 2021.”
Who knows, maybe the world is a little less on fire next time and we can celebrate New Year’s Eve in person again. Or maybe we’m stuck in our underground bunkers at the end of 2021 murder horns and rodent tornadoes invade the surface. I think it’s a 50/50 shot at this point.