WhatsApp users made over 1.4 billion voice, video calls globally on New Year's Eve

WhatsApp users across the world over made more than 1.4 billion voice and video calls on New Year’s Eve.

This is said to be the most ever calls in a single day made on the platform.

“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,” Caitlin Banford, Technical Programme Manager at Facebook, said in a statement.

“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,” he added.

“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.”

It was a big day for the company’s other chat app Facebook Messenger as well, which saw nearly twice as many group video calls compared to its daily average.