WhatsApp has set a new record for the number of video and voice calls in one day. This occurred over the new year period with so many of us celebrating the event apart from loved ones. As announced in an infographic by Facebook, 1.4 billion video and voice calls occurred on January 1.
WhatsApp appears to be going from strength to strength when it comes to user experience and engagement. The Facebook-owned platform has been hard at work adding a number of new features over recent weeks and months.
These include a new ‘cart’ feature to make the innovate shopping section of the platform easier to navigate. WhatsApp has also added a new custom wallpaper feature. This allows users to set different background for each different chat they have on their app.
The company was proud to announce its record-breaking statistics from this year. Facebook was able to report that across all of its apps including, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp the pandemic has caused a surge in users. However, as reported by Phone Arena the biggest spike came on New Year’s day as users wanted to connect with friends and family that they normally would have seen in the flesh.
WhatsApp announces record-breaking new year’s call statistics
Caitlin Banford, who is the technical program manager at Facebook, shared some insight into the new year’s statistics. She pointed out the normally the various apps would see a large spike in messaging, photo uploads and social sharing.
However, this year WhatsApp saw a record number of video and voice calls as many were forced to spend New Year’s apart.
She pointed out that this is hardly surprising as traffic spikes from March 2020 in the initial COVID-19 lockdown exceeded previous New Year’s several times over.
This forced Facebook to work hard to drive greater efficiency across its platforms to keep up with demand. This number of voice and video calls amounts to a 50% increase compared to the same day last year.
Across other apps such as Messenger and Instagram New Year’s also produced a spike in traffic. The number of group video calls on Messenger amounted to double the amount of an average day throughout the year. Whilst on Instagram and Facebook there were over 55 million live broadcasts produced.
This has all served to demonstrate that due to the fact that many of us are apart physically, we are finding other ways to connect. Facebook seem to be a large beneficiary of this seeing such outstanding numbers across their platforms.