Facebook and WhatsApp reached a new milestone on new year's eve

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We are into the fourth day of the New Year and Facebook has reached a new milestone in terms of Live Broadcasting. According to the company, more than 10 million people around the world went live on Facebook to share their New Years eve moments with their communities.

"The night topped last year's live broadcast activity, with people sharing 47 percent more live videos than last year," Erin Connolly, Product Manager at Facebook, wrote in a blog post. "People were excited to count down to 2018 with friends - wherever they were. We saw more than 3 times as many broadcasts with a friend on New Year's eve compared to an average day in December, making it the biggest day so far for live with."

New Year's Eve is no doubt celebrated big around the world and obviously, it is a great time for live broadcasts. Facebook had also launched a handful of live features like live Augmented Reality (AR) effects and party hats ahead of the new year to give users additional options and make their stream more entertaining.

Facebook didn't share data on how many people viewed those live videos though and has just stated, "When you go live you can share your experiences with people you care about. With Facebook Live, people can still be at the same moment even if they aren't in the same place."

Meanwhile, Facebook-owned WhatsApp also hit a new milestone on New Year's Eve with more than 75 billion messages sent by its users. In fact, due to over usage, the messaging app reportedly went down and was out of service for a certain period of time for many users in India.

However, WhatsApp registered these numbers despite the fact that users in India and other parts of the world went into a frenzy after the messaging platform crashed It was restored in two hours. The record was also set despite WhatsApp discontinuing support for Blackberry OS and Windows Phone services on December 31.

According to VentureBeat, the new record represents the most messages sent in a single day in the chat app's history. The previous record was set in 2016, also on New Year's Eve, with 63 billion messages sent. The 75 billion number included 13 billion images and five billion videos.