Azar is Chatroulette back from the dead, and it's going viral under your nose

You remember Chatroulette, right?

Azar is a mobile app attempting to resurrect that old-school livechat experience for the new generation — and it's going viral under our noses.

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Within three years of Azar's launch, the Korean company behind it, Hyperconnect, claims the app has hit 100 million downloads in over 200 countries, and made 13 billion matches between users. Traffic grows threefold each year, the firm says.

The premise is simple: Connect with new chat partners one-to-one, and swipe to make a new match if you don't like the current one.

Unlike Chatroulette, which did little outside of video and text chatting with random strangers, Azar allows you to add contacts you like so you can chat again, and brings in today's chat expressions like stickers and filters.

I was most impressed with its ability to do real-time voice translation using Google Translate.

Image: elaine ramirez

Azar says it's made money from the get-go, with users purchasing "gems" — its in-app currency — to unlock filters so they can pick chat partners by region and gender. 

After a surge in sudden popularity in Taiwan that boosted its global rankings on Google Play, Azar claims it's reached 1 million users within eight weeks of its 2014 launch and $100,000 in monthly revenue in less than six months.

According to Sensortower.com, Azar was the 9th top-earning non-game app worldwide on Google Play for 2016.

But what about all those nudes?

Like Chatroulette, Azar too struggles to overcome the challenge of protecting the innocent from the not-so-innocent.

On one recent session on Azar, here was my first match — a guy in the shower:

Image: elaine ramirez

After switching to another match, I soon received professions of love:

Image: ELAINE RAMIREZ

And because Azar aims to match strangers together — unlike the majority of social networks out there — the risk of random dick pics continues to run high.

You're also able to lie about your age on the app, so the app's minimum age limit of 14 is somewhat meaningless as a barrier against offensive content.

Hyperconnect's CEO Samuel Ahn told Mashable the company is working on a way to better verify ages.

He noted that over 90 percent of Azar's users are over age 20 globally, and the app keeps minors and adults separate for matches.

The app even has plainclothes "monitoring agents" to watch for sketchy users, he claims. 

Ultimately, the app is aimed at providing a lens to the world for folks in under-developed countries who may not have the opportunity to travel.

"With this app they can make a foreign friend online,” says Ahn.

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