Case Study: Blued achieves 153% API performance improvement and accelerated global user growth with Akamai Technologies

Akamai’s Web Performance solution helps Blued accelerate user growth globally

Blued, a fast-growing gay social app launched in 2012 with over 15 million users, sought to expand beyond China into North America and Southeast Asia but struggled with performance and availability. Hosting its backend centrally in Beijing combined with chatty, location‑based APIs and mobile last‑mile network issues led to slow load times and a degraded user experience for international users.

Blued deployed Akamai’s Web Performance solutions—primarily Ion and Edgescape—to optimize its native mobile app and APIs. The result: JSON API performance improved by 153% worldwide, more accurate location services, reduced first‑screen times, longer user sessions, and a substantially accelerated overseas user growth.

Blued

Liu Yuanchen

Chief Technology Officer