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This year, the world’s population has spent an unprecedented holiday season. Due to the global health crisis, many countries have notably spent the last day of the year in confinement, or with social distancing measures in force. So people had to improvise to wish each other a happy new year. For its part, WhatsApp recorded 1.4 billion calls on New Year’s Eve. A record for the application.
Many people have indeed opted for a distanced party on New Years Eve. As a result, videoconferencing applications have been more than requested by Internet users. With its 1.4 billion calls made on December 31, WhatsApp recorded a 50% increase over the previous year on the same date. So that all Internet users can make their calls without a hitch, Facebook – which owns the messaging application – made sure that its team was on the cleat on the evening of December 31.
For its part, Facebook messaging also experienced a big spike on New Year’s Eve. However, he would not have broken his record during this evening. ” Ahead of Covid-19, New Years Eve generated Facebook’s biggest peaks in messaging, photo uploading and social sharing at midnight across the world. However, in March 2020, the first days of the pandemic produced spikes in traffic that would eclipse New Year’s Eve several times – and that went on for months. », Explained Caitlin Banford, head of the technical program of the American company.
Note that messaging and video calling applications have experienced a sharp increase in user activity since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. In February 2020, WhatsApp announced that it had exceeded two billion users.
