Member Login
menu

How The Social Giant Facebook Is Struggling Amid The Coronavirus

Facebook products - face masks

The coronavirus 'COVID-19' has given the world a drastic change in almost everything.

While some like the online adult industry and hackers are benefiting the trend, the rest are experiencing the impact in a bad way.

From the lockdown and social distancing rules in many countries, companies were urged to have their employees work from home. Tech companies that should operate on the internet 24/7 dealing with billions of users, are relying on AI more than ever before".

And this includes Facebook.

With more than 2 billion users across its platforms, COVID-19 has given the company the impact it may never forget.

In a blog post, Facebook said that:

"[...] Much of the increased traffic is happening on our messaging services, but we’ve also seen more people using our feed and stories products to get updates from their family and friends. At the same time, our business is being adversely affected like so many others around the world. We don’t monetize many of the services where we’re seeing increased engagement, and we’ve seen a weakening in our ads business in countries taking aggressive actions to reduce the spread of COVID-19."

With more people staying at home and away from those they were used to be together with, uses of messaging apps like Messenger and WhatsApp, as well as Facebook's core app and Instagram, have increased by more than 50%.

In Italy specifically, Facebook saw up to 70% more time spent across its apps since the crisis arrived in the country, with Instagram and Facebook Live views doubled in a week.

"We have also seen messaging increase over 50% and time in group calling (calls with three or more participants) increase by over 1,000% during the last month," said Facebook.

Facebook group call in Italy 2020 after coronavirus pandemic
"During this emergency, we’re doing everything we can to keep our apps fast, stable, and reliable. Our services were built to withstand spikes during events such as the Olympics or on New Year’s Eve. However, those happen infrequently, and we have plenty of time to prepare for them. The usage growth from COVID-19 is unprecedented across the industry, and we are experiencing new records in usage almost every day."

The means to maintain stability has proven a challenge for Facebook because most of its employees are working from home.

"To help alleviate potential network congestion, we are temporarily reducing bit rates for videos on Facebook and Instagram in certain regions. Lastly, we’re conducting testing and further preparing so we can quickly respond to any problems that might arise with our services," Facebook said.

"As this global public health crisis advances and more people are physically separated from their communities, we expect that people will continue to rely on our services to stay connected during this time, and we hope these connections make it easier for people to stay home."

Previously, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg said that the amount of data that passes through Facebook is overwhelming its servers, forcing the company to upgrade its servers to prevent 'melt down'.

Both YouTube and Netflix are experiencing the same thing, and are said to decrease the quality of their streams in order to not burden the internet infrastructure.

Read: Facebook, Netflix And YouTube Struggle To Keep Up With The Coronavirus Pandemic 'Side Effects'

Published: 
26/03/2020