According to official figures released in a statement by social media giant Facebook, voice and video calling on WhatsApp surged by 50% in 2021 as compared to New Year’s Eve in 2020.

One of the most popular messaging apps all in the world, WhatsApp gained even more traction this year as many people were staying indoors due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Official statistics show that 55 million live broadcasts took place globally across Facebook and Instagram during the year.

Describing this surge in popularity amid the pandemic, Caitlin Banford, technical program manager at Facebook, said in the statement, “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 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,” she added, noting the work employees had been doing to sustain this rush through ‘load testing, disaster recovery testing and shuffling capacity’.