WhatsApp delivers record 14 billion messages for Indians New Year’s Eve

WhatsApp has announced 14 billion messages were exchanged on the messaging app in India on New Year’s Eve.

WhatsApp said 32 percent of the messages were in some form of media ranging from photos, GIF images, and videos to voice messages, the Facebook-owned instant messaging platform said on Friday.

The number of messages shared on the platform on New Year’s Eve is even higher than the last record set during Diwali when 8 billion messages were sent in one day, WhatsApp said.

A total of 3.1 billion images, 700 million GIF images, and 610 million videos were sent on WhatsApp on the occasion in the country alone. WhatsApp has more than 160 million monthly active users in India.

In Nigeria, millions of users took to the instant messaging app to send messages in the form of texts, photos, GIFs, voice notes and videos to friends and families over the yuletide.

Interestingly, WhatsApp only recently rolled out the ability to share animated GIF images on the platform. WhatsApp for iPhone got the feature back in November, while WhatsApp for Android got the feature in December. Android recently also got the ability to stream shared videos, letting users view videos before they were downloaded.

Last month, a major new feature was reportedly spotted in the WhatsApp for iPhone beta – the ability to revoke and edit sent messages. Several other messaging apps offer similar features, and their addition to WhatsApp will certainly be well-received. Also spotted was the ability to preview shared archive files.

Notably, WhatsApp stopped working on older versions of Android, iOS, and Windows Phone on December 31. Devices running on Android 2.2 or lower, iOS 6 or lower, and Windows Phone 7 are no longer supported by the app.

WhatsApp also announced it is dropping support for BlackBerry OS in December 2016 but extended the shutdown date for the BlackBerry OS devices till June this year.