The Facebook WhatsApp cross-platform chat app saw the highest number of users on New Year’s Eve as some people chose to celebrate the end of 2020 almost this year. For even though that cursed year from Hades is finally behind us, the covid-19 pandemic is certainly not.
More than 1.4 billion video and voice calls were made on New Year’s Eve, the largest app ever in a single day, each company blog post. While Facebook said New Year’s Eve was historically the busiest night, it saw a spike of around 50% compared to this time last year.
It was also a big day for the Facebook Messenger company ‘s other chat app, which saw nearly twice as many group video calls compared to its daily average. 55 million live broadcasts were made across Facebook and Instagram worldwide.
“[I]In March 2020, the early days of the pandemic brought traffic spikes that hit New Year’s Eve several times – and lasted for months, ”said Facebook technical program manager Caitlin Banford. “Behind the scenes, Facebook Engineering has come together to drive unprecedented efficiency improvements and make our infrastructure more sustainable.”
Hosting the highest number of users on New Year’s Eve is a testament to those months of testing its all-fuel infrastructure and despite increased traffic on its apps among extensive lockouts.
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“This year, New Year’s Eve looked very different, and we had engineering teams across Facebook apps, ready to support any issue, so that the world could shout in 2021. ”
Who knows, maybe at this time next year the world will be a little less on fire and we will be able to celebrate New Year’s Eve in person again. Or we may be involved in counting down the end of 2021 in our underground bunkers after the murder horn and rodent tornadoes overwhelm the surface. In my opinion it is a 50/50 view at this point.