Many people don’t want to say they’ve met their partner on a dating app, Abolfathi explained, but something like Azar might not have the same negative association, since it’s not really akin to, say, Tinder
If you don’t pay for those add-ons, you’ll easily find yourself chatting with someone on another continent. Prince said that, aside from people in Turkey, he’s spoken to users in Hong Kong, Thailand, India, and France. Part of the novelty of Azar is the ability to flirt across borders: The app has embedded Google Translate’s API, which allows speakers of different languages to send translated messages in real time.
“Spending time on Azar is [a way of] coping with stress for me, as I’m in the middle of finishing my thesis,” said Ulfa, a graduate student from Indonesia’s South Sulawesi province, who heard about the app from a close friend and asked to use only her first name for privacy reasons. Continue reading “Ulfa herself shies away from calling Azar a dating app”