Hyperconnect

Hyperconnect provides secure, seamless live video streaming and real-time communications to millions worldwide using Cloudflare

Seoul-based Hyperconnect is a video streaming innovator. Azar — Hyperconnect’s real-time video communication and multi-language social discovery platform with over 540 million downloads — enables communication across cultures by instantly translating its users’ voice, video, and text communications. With an established membership primarily worldwide, Azar has already facilitated over 100 billion matches in 21 languages.

Hyperconnect’s real-time streaming and live video-sharing platform, Hakuna Live, creates a more public and interactive experience. Popular in Korea and Japan, Hakuna Live provides over 23 million Hakuna users with broadcast capabilities that connect group chats of up to six hosts with unlimited audiences of public users.

Acquired for $1.72 billion in 2021 by Match Group — home of online dating services like Match, Tinder, and Hinge — Hyperconnect and its portfolio of cutting-edge, real-time video, AI, and augmented reality avatar technologies are now being applied and showcased across Match Group's subsidiaries.

Challenge: Accelerating international growth without compromising performance or user satisfaction

As a provider of live streaming and video communications intent on expanding its international footprint, solid network performance is high on Hyperconnect’s list of priorities. When the platform approached half a billion users, however, maintaining high-quality service became problematic. As the company’s user base increased, each new bottleneck on the Internet further compromised the Hyperconnect user experience.

“Even a small amount of latency caused our users significant delays,” explains Roa Park, engineer at Hyperconnect. “Because those delays interrupted real-time communications, it was a major issue for us. It demanded immediate attention as global interest in our services increased.”

Hyperconnect’s security concerns also grew alongside its applications’ global reach and popularity. As more people around the globe embraced the platform, Hyperconnect experienced a surge in unwanted online attention. This included DDoS attacks, as well as heightened exposure to zero-day exploits and other Internet-borne threats.

Faced with Hyperconnect's rapid expansion, its existing network and hosting provider could not cope with either its international bandwidth requirements or security needs.

Solution: Improving international customer engagement and reducing TTFB with the Cloudflare connectivity cloud

Seeking a way to improve the security and stability of its services, Hyperconnect switched to Cloudflare. To address its performance and latency issues on a global scale, Hyperconnect chose Cloudflare's connectivity cloud for application performance services.

Using the Cloudflare global network, Hyperconnect leveraged over 310 points of Cloudflare presence in 120 countries to make sure its content was always located as near to its users as possible — both in Asia and abroad. Cloudflare’s network of globally distributed servers ensured that each video stream reached the end user with minimal latency or delay, even during peak use periods. Argo Smart Routing in the connectivity cloud minimized Internet slowdowns and latency between regions by detecting network issues in real time and always redirecting stream traffic along the most efficient path.

Cloudflare performance services improved Hyperconnect’s time to first byte (TTFB), allowing users to dive right into chat or begin streaming as soon as they connect. Faster TTFB also meant faster load times, reducing the likelihood of users abandoning Hyperconnect services due to slow performance.

“Since we started using Cloudflare, we've seen significant performance gains across the board, regardless of region,” says Park. “That keeps our users engaged and active online and improves conversion to our paid services.”

By caching static and frequently requested content on its global network, Cloudflare also helped reduce bandwidth demands and round trips to Hyperconnect’s origin servers. The reduced demand resulted in significant cuts to the company’s operational costs.

Hyperconnect has saved even more by deploying the Cloudflare developer platform to remove processing loads from its own servers. It uses Workers to dynamically resize, optimize, and serve images and platform updates from the connectivity cloud.

Securing mobile applications against hostile traffic, and online threats with a single, straightforward solution

In tandem with its adoption of Cloudflare’s application performance services, the security team at Hyperconnect implemented Cloudflare’s core application security services. With Cloudflare in place to protect its domains, websites, and APIs, Hyperconnect mitigates the hostile traffic from DDoS attacks, and other Internet-related security threats. By reducing its attack surfaces and deflecting unwanted traffic with Cloudflare, the company achieved further bandwidth reductions and cost savings.

“Cloudflare solutions bolster our resilience against malicious threats and create a secure environment for our users,” says Park. “Cloudflare has proven invaluable in countering DDoS attacks and zero-day exploits, and the bandwidth we conserve plays a crucial role in the way we manage costs as we expand.”

For Hyperconnect, simplified maintenance and ease of use have been key benefits of the move to Cloudflare. With its straightforward, unified control interface, Cloudflare saves the company both time and effort when it comes to managing its performance and security systems across multiple territories.

“Other providers offered what appeared to be similar services, but they always came with a hidden cost — complexity,” says Park. “Cloudflare delivers as promised. That has allowed us to build excellent products without excessive additional effort.”

For a company that depends on providing reliable connectivity between geographical regions and fast, uninterrupted service to its expanding international user base, Cloudflare has proven to be the ideal partner.

“Maintaining excellence is central to ensuring positive outcomes and seamless growth for the business,” says Park. “Cloudflare helps us translate our technical advancements into business advantages.”