WhatsApp sets new record for calls on New Year's Eve

This year's New Year’s Eve was different, people chose to stay home, celebrate and connect with friends and family through online video and audio calling, and naturally, it broke records.

Facebook shared on its blog that over 1.4 billion voice and video calls were made on New Year’s Eve 2020 globally, the most ever calls made in a single day on WhatsApp.

WhatsApp calling increased over 50% compared to the same day last year.

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“At Facebook, we saw surges in video chatting all year across Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and last night was no exception. New Year’s Eve is a historically busy night for our services, but this year set new records,” the company 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,” said Caitlin Banford, technical program manager at Facebook.

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The most used AR effect in the US was “2020 Fireworks” on Facebook while on 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.

Facebook Live and Instagram Live also had 55 million broadcasts worldwide.