Since everyone is staying home, Facebook is getting ridiculous traffic

Since everyone is staying home due to the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak, many forms of entertainment are seeing surges in popularity, and to no one's surprise, Facebook is one of those forms of entertainment.

Since millions of people around the world are being forced to stay home, Facebook is seeing millions of more people being active on its platform. In Italy, Facebook has said they have seen a 70% increase in traffic and a 50% increase in messaging. This increase in traffic is happening globally, and Facebook has now said that this new level of traffic is straining the companies resources.

VP of Analytics, Alex Schultz, and VP of Infrastructure, Jay Pareikh, wrote a joint statement, saying, "The usage growth from COVID-19 is unprecedented across the industry, and we are experiencing new records in usage almost every day. Maintaining stability throughout these spikes in usage is more challenging than usual now that most of our employees are working from home."

Facebook has had to reduce the video quality in Europe to keep up with the overwhelming traffic, but this might not be enough. Facebook has also stated that its revenue might be in the crosshairs to taking a hit as well. According to Schultz and Parikh, Facebook is seeing a weakening effect on their ads business, and that many of the services that are getting this massive engagement aren't even monetized.

"We don't monetize many of the services where we're seeing increased engagement, and we've seen a weakening in our ads business in countries taking aggressive actions to reduce the spread of COVID-19", said Schultz and Parikh.