Facebook experienced major usage spikes back in March 2020. At that time, the 'COVID-19' coronavirus was just starting to plague the world beyond China.
Since people started to increasingly rely on virtual communication, the amount of data that passes through Facebook is overwhelming its servers.
Months later, Facebook was expecting another surge in usage when 2020 was about to end. And this prompted the company's engineering team to make “unprecedented efficiency improvements” to its online services so it would be ready to face the anticipated record-breaking numbers during the New Year’s Eve.
And that happened to be true, as with the ongoing pandemic, New Year’s Eve of 2021 was unlike the years before.
According to Facebook in a post:
Earlier in 2020, in a transcript of the conference call, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that:
"We are on a sustained basis well beyond what that spike is on New Year’s. Just making sure that we can manage that is the challenge that we're trying to make sure that we can stay in front of."
In response, Facebook had to increase the capacity and the infrastructure of its servers, just to keep up, with Zuckerberg noting that the company has doubled the server capacity for the messaging apps.
Zuckerberg also said that Facebook planned to continue building even more capacity in case the coronavirus spreads even more widely around the world in countries whose citizens rely on Facebook's products, like its core social media app, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.
And all those efforts and preparations managed to make Facebook and its properties operate without hiccups.
When 2020 was ending, Facebook and Instagram experienced an immense surge in video chatting, with more than 55 million live broadcasts globally during New Year’s Eve.
"New Year’s Eve is a historically busy night for our services, but this year set new records," the company said.
During the day that the New Year was experienced globally, regions at a time, Facebook other services like Messenger and WhatsApp also saw record usage throughout the day and evening.
WhatsApp saw more than 1.4 billion voice and video calls take place on New Year’s Eve globally, setting a new WhatsApp record for the most ever calls in a single day, and marking a 50% increase compared to the same day last year.
“In 2020, people turned to technology to stay in touch and get things done in the face of social distancing and stay-at-home mandates, and video calling became arguably the most in-demand feature,” Facebook said.
Facebook has strengthened its services, and faced the New Year prepared. With the pandemic continuing, the social giant is also ready for surges in the months to come, especially when the the world is expecting COVID-19 vaccines to evenly spread to put greater confidence of people going outside.
Further reading: How The Social Giant Facebook Is Struggling Amid The Coronavirus
