The cross-platform chat app Facebook saw a record number of users on New Year’s Eve, as some people have smartly opted to celebrate the end of 2020 practically this year. Because even though that cursed year of Hades is finally behind us, the covid-19 pandemic is of course not.
More than 1.4 billion video and voice calls were placed on New Year’s Eve, the largest application in a single day, per a post on the company’s blog. While Facebook said that New Year’s Eve was, historically, the busiest night, it increased by about 50% compared to this period last year.
It was a great day for the other Facebook Messenger chat app, which recorded almost twice as many group video calls as compared to its daily average. There were also 55 million live broadcasts on Facebook and Instagram worldwide.
“[I]In March 2020, the first days of the pandemic produced traffic increases that would prevent New Year’s Eve several times – and it lasted for months, “said Caitlin Banford, Facebook’s technical program manager. “Behind the scenes, Facebook Engineering has come together to improve unprecedented efficiency and make our infrastructure more resilient.”
The successful hosting of a record number of users on New Year’s Eve is a testament to those months of testing its improved infrastructure and increased traffic resilience on its applications amid widespread blockages.
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“This year, New Year’s Eve looked very different and we had teams of engineers in Facebook applications, ready to support any problem, so that people could call in 2021.”
Who knows, maybe this time next year the world will be a little less on fire and we will be able to celebrate the New Year personally. Or maybe we will be stuck counting down at the end of 2021 in our underground bunkers after wasp killers and rodent tornadoes exceed the surface. I guess it’s a 50/50 shot right now.