Technical / Record for most WhatsApp calls made in 1 day broken with 1.4 bn calls on New Year's Eve

Technical Desk: Facebook has revealed some statistics about the amount of calls that the instant messaging application WhatsApp conducted on its platform of New Year’s Eve. Unsurprisingly, the platform registered the highest ever number of calls on its platform on a single day.

WhatsApp has registered over 1.4 billion voice and video calls on the New Year’s Eve globally. Facebook claims that the platform witnessed the most ever calls in a single day. In comparison to last year, the platform registered a whopping 50% increased WhatsApp calling.

WhatsApp’s parent platform's Messenger also witnessed a surge in video calls as well as group video calls. According to a statement by the company, New Year’s Eve 2020 was the biggest day ever for Messenger group video calls (3+ people) in the US, with nearly 2X more group video calls on NYE compared to the average day. The statement claims that users celebrated with effects in Messenger.

Furthermore, there were more than 55 million live broadcasts across Facebook and Instagram globally on New Year’s Eve.

Caitlin Banford, technical program manager at Facebook said, “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. 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."