WhatsApp saw 75bn messages sent and received on New Year’s Eve

How did you wish loved ones a Happy New Year? For some across the world who typically use WhatsApp, this task was made difficult by an unexpected year-end outage.

But in spite of this poor luck, the Facebook-owned messaging service still recorded a new single day pinnacle for messages sent and received on its platform.

A record 75-billion messages were reportedly sent and received on New Year’s Eve, besting the previous number — set last year — by some 12-billion. That’s an average of about 57 messages per WhatsApp user.

13-billion images and five billion videos were also snapped, recorded and shared across the world.

Notably, 20-billion of these messages — more than a quarter — were sent in India alone.

Based on these numbers, the sudden New Year’s Eve outage seemingly didn’t affect the chat app’s usage on the day.

Areas across Europe, the Asian subcontinent and Africa experienced outages, preventing users from sending or receiving messages. In South Africa, the outage struck just prior to the dawn of 2018, but was remedied within hours.

H/T: Venturebeat

Feature image: Memeburn