Facebook-owned WhatsApp is the world’s primary instant messaging service which is used by almost everyone in India. Recently, the platform has made a new record of registering the most voice and video calls in one day with over 1.4 billion calls made on New Year’s Eve 2020.
As we are all aware of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been a rough couple of months for everyone forced-shut in their houses with internet and digital platforms being the only mode of communication and socialising.
As Indians couldn’t dance to the tunes of New Year Eve’s celebrations with an equivalent enthusiasm and partying this year due to government restraints and therefore the threat from the COVID-19 pandemic, WhatsApp and other communication platforms saved the day that Facebook made a new record.
This New Year’s Eve, WhatsApp registered over 1.4 billion voice and video calls globally in a single day, this is huge. According to Facebook, the platform jumped 50% over last year’s record for the most WhatsApp calls.
Not just WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger service also witnessed a surge in video calls and group video calls according to several reports. Amidst social distancing norms and restriction on going out of houses, video calling and video conferencing became the go-to form of communication. Not just with Facebook and WhatsApp, but throughout 2020, video conferencing platforms such as Zoom was in high demand and became very profitable.
Facebook mentioned in a blog that New Year’s Eve became the busiest night for the company, setting new records for WhatsApp and Messenger. Facebook’s Instagram also witnessed an increase in engagement on the night across countries. Facebook Messenger’s group video calling feature where more than three people were added in the US made the biggest day for the platform, ever. The figures this year were two times than last year on the platform in a single day.
Facebook also claims that more than 55 million users were Live broadcasting and celebrating their New Year’s Eve across Instagram and Facebook across countries on the 31st of December 2020.
This New Year’s Eve was a lot different than it usually is, with everything going digital and the pandemic, 2020 was chaos. Facebook had a pretty good start for the New Year and it claims to have had engineering teams across all Facebook-owned apps, be it Messenger, Instagram or Facebook app, ready for technical support at any time, mentioned Technical Program Manager at Facebook, Caitlin Banford.
