Facebook: 1.4 billion voice and video calls on WhatsApp on NYE 2020

We were all on our smartphones more this year with over 1.4 billion voice and video calls being made on New Year's Eve 2020 globally on WhatsApp... that's a helluva lot of calls, and a record number of calls made on a single day for WhatsApp.

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The news comes directly from Facebook -- which owns WhatsApp -- and a new post on their website providing the world with some NYE celebration stats across their services. WhatsApp wasn't the only app lit up like a Christmas tree in terms of activity, but FB also owns Messenger, Instagram and Facebook Live.

All of these services were flooded with users but didn't come close to the 1.4 billion voice and video calls over WhatsApp, with over 55 million live broadcasts across both Facebook and Instagram globally on New Year's Eve.

WhatsApp

• More than 1.4 billion voice and video calls were made on New Year's Eve 2020 globally, the most ever calls in a single day on WhatsApp.
• WhatsApp calling increased over 50% compared to the same day last year.

Messenger

• People celebrated with effects in Messenger, and the top AR effect in the US was "2020 Fireworks."
• 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.

Instagram Live and Facebook Live

• 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".