Who Made Ablo? The Team Behind the App

Ablo was built by Massive Media, a Belgian studio based in Ghent. Before Ablo, the team was best known for Netlog and Twoo, two social networking platforms. By the time Ablo launched in early 2019, Massive Media was already part of Match Group.

The Launch and Early Success

Ablo appeared on Product Hunt on 22 January 2019, where it reached #6 of the day with 139 upvotes. The launch comments praised the polished flight UI and live translation subtitles, but they also flagged problems that would haunt the app for years: weaponised reports, paywalled filters, and harassment.

Later that year, Google named Ablo the Best App of 2019 on the Play Store. The award drove a surge in downloads. By the time the app shut down, it had reached about 6.5 million downloads across 180 countries, with roughly 50,000 friendships formed per day.

The Match Group Connection

Massive Media was already inside Match Group when Ablo was conceived. Ablo was built for friendship and cultural exchange, with no flirting features or romance-focused design.

In 2021, Match Group bought Hyperconnect, the South Korean company behind Azar. Azar is a video-first chat app. When Ablo shut down on 30 September 2022, users were redirected to Azar. The reaction was overwhelmingly negative. Turkish reviewers wrote "biz aileydik" (we were a family), and Spanish users posted "la extraño" (I miss it) with over a thousand helpful votes. Reviewers described Azar as video-only and "not the same."

The Team That Built It

Massive Media was based in Ghent, Belgium. The team had a track record of building large social platforms. Ablo was their attempt to apply that experience to a new format: random text chat with real-time translation, dressed as air travel.

The flight metaphor was central to the product. You tapped to fly, a paper plane crossed a globe, and a loading card showed trivia about your destination. Reviewers called it "travel from your sofa." That concept, combined with the translation engine, was what users loved most.

The Shutdown and Aftermath

Ablo never gave a public reason for shutting down. Users guessed it was about moderation costs, safety problems, or simple consolidation into Azar. Whatever the reason, the shutdown was abrupt. There was no warning, no data export, and no way to say goodbye to friends made on the platform. Many users had only Ablo as their contact channel, so friendships of three years vanished overnight.

The Play Store listing stayed live for years on a broken backend. As late as August 2026, users were still posting 1-star reviews saying "something went wrong" and asking for the app to return.

What the 2025 Copycat Shows

In January 2025, a company called Yancheng Binary Tree Technology published an app with the same name on Google Play. It reached 100,000 installs but earned only a 2.2-star rating. Users complained about paywalls after two messages, broken translation, and bans with no explanation. The fact that it got 100,000 installs at all shows how much demand is still out there. People are still searching for what Ablo offered.

Olu and the Spirit of Ablo

If you miss Ablo's core idea – talking to someone across the world without sharing a language – there is a simpler way today. Olu works in a browser with nothing to install. You tap to take off and fly to a random country, then chat one-on-one by text. Every message is translated both ways, with the original text a tap away. There are no video calls, no voice calls, and nothing you need to talk to someone costs money. Miles are earned, never bought. Friends and reconnecting are free. If nobody from a country is online, you may meet an AI local, which is always labelled as AI.

It is not a replacement for Ablo. It is a different approach, built from the ground up for text-only cultural exchange. But if what you loved about Ablo was the feeling of landing somewhere new and meeting someone real, try Olu.