Bumble is an online dating and networking application launched in 2014. Profiles of potential matches are displayed to users, who can "swipe left" to reject a candidate or "swipe right" to indicate interest. The app is a product of Bumble Inc., founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd shortly after she left Tinder. Wolfe Herd has described Bumble as a "feminist dating app".[3]
The company is valued at more than $1 billion, reportedly having over 50 million users in 190 countries as of 2023.[4][5][6][7]
As of June 2024, Bumble was the most downloaded dating application in the United States with 735,000 downloads.[8]
History
Whitney Wolfe Herd, an early VP of Marketing at Tinder, founded Bumble shortly after leaving Tinder.[9] Wolfe Herd sued Tinder for sexual discrimination and harassment and settled for just over $1 million in September 2014.[9] Amidst the media attention surrounding the lawsuit, acquaintance, and Badoo founder and CEO Andrey Andreev contacted Wolfe Herd via email, and the two met up.[10] The pair formed a partnership: Andreev received 79% ownership in the company for an initial investment of $10 million, along with additional investments; Wolfe Herd served as founder, CEO, and 20% owner. As part of the agreement, the new company would also utilize Badoo's infrastructure and Andreev's consulting.[4] Wolfe Herd said the partnership was key due to Andreev's "knowledge and infrastructure".[11]
After the partnership was established, the pair recruited fellow Tinder departees Chris Gulczynski and Sarah Mick to design the interface and help launch Bumble.[10] Bumble was launched three months later in December 2014.[12] Infrastructure in Badoo's London headquarters was used for Bumble.[11][13]
The company was valued at more than $1 billion in November 2017.[4] When private equity firm Blackstone Inc. purchased a majority stake in Bumble's parent company MagicLab, Bumble and its sister apps were valued at $3 billion.[14] Bumble and its sister apps earned $162 million in net revenue in 2018.[14] In 2020, MagicLab was renamed Bumble Inc. as the parent company of both Bumble and Badoo.[15] As of 2020, Bumble had been downloaded over 100 million times.[15]
The company headquarters are in Austin, Texas, and, as of 2021, had 650 employees globally.[16]
In February 2021, Bumble raised $2.2 billion through its IPO and the company had a valuation of over $7 billion.[17] Bumble was listed on the Nasdaq exchange, with shares initially valued at $43 but increasing to $76 on its opening day, valuing the company at more than $13 billion.[18][19] By November 2021, the company's shares had fallen by 20% after a quarterly earnings report which posited a decline in user growth, and users prepared to pay for its premium features.[20]
In February 2022, Bumble announced it had acquired Fruitz, a French-owned freemium dating app popular with Gen Z and used across Europe.[21] This was the company's first acquisition.[22]
Starting in April 2022, Bumble users who report abuse are eligible for a collection of free courses from Bloom, an online provider of support for assault survivors.[23]
By November 2023, its fourth-quarter earnings showed that inflation and growing competition with Tinder had reduced user spending on its app's paid features.[24] The news coincided with its founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd stepping down and Slack's chief executive Lidiane Jones replacing her.[25]
In February 2024, Bumble announced plans of laying off 350 employees as part of a restructuring plan, which constitutes 30% of Bumble's workforce.[26][27]
Bumble acquired the friend-finding group chat app Geneva in June 2024.[28][29]
Operation
Matching users
Users swipe right to "like" a potential match and left to reject them.[30] In matches between a man and a woman, the woman must initiate the conversation with their match or the matches disappear within 24 hours; either person in a same-sex match can reach out.[31][32][33] This process changed in 2024 when Bumble launched Opening Moves; the feature allows female users to add prompts to their profiles for men to respond to. For same-sex and nonbinary users, either person can use these prompts.[34][35][36][37][38]
The app has features allowing the user to have favorite conversations, sort conversations, and send photo messages.[39]
In March 2016, Bumble released BFF mode as a way for users to find platonic friends. After switching into the mode, the app replaces potential dates with people of the user's same sex who are also looking for friends.[40] BFF mode uses the same swipe right or left platform as the app's dating mode and requires that a conversation is started within 24 hours of matching with a potential friend. Conversations started with potential friends are color-coded as green as opposed to yellow for dates. As the feature was rolled out, Bumble also announced that it would eventually release a dual-profile feature allowing users to curate a profile for dating or friendship.[41][42]
In April 2016, the Bumble app was updated to combat ghosting. As part of the update, if a user is messaged after matching with a potential partner and does not respond within 24 hours, the match disappears.[43] Before the update, men were allowed unlimited time to respond to a message from women. An update was also launched for same-sex matches, with either party allowed to initiate and the other having to respond within 24 hours.[44]
As reported by Wired in 2023, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism interviewed content moderators working for Bumble, finding that they claimed to experience anxiety, depression, and PTSD associated with their work, with concerns about professional mental health support, productivity targets, and understaffing.[50]
In July 2024, Bumble introduced a reporting option for profiles using photos generated by artificial intelligence.[51]
User verification
Formerly, Bumble users were required to log in via Facebook when signing up. In April 2018, Bumble added an option to sign up using only a phone number, following Facebook's involvement in a controversy with Cambridge Analytica.[52] For users who sign up with Facebook, information from their account is used to build a profile with photos and basic information, including the user's college and job.[33]
Bumble launched a photo verification tool in September 2016 to ensure that users of the app were the same people in their profile pictures. To be verified, users are asked to submit a selfie of them performing a specific pose; the picture is reviewed by a real person who ensures the user is the person in the profile pictures.[53] Bumble was the first dating app to include photo verification in the US.[54]
Filters
In 2020, Bumble announced a temporary feature that allowed users to expand their distance filters to match with anyone in the country. Previously, the app only allowed people to connect within a 100-mile (160 km) range. Daters could also add a "virtual dating" badge to their profile to indicate that they are willing to date over video calls.[55]
On January 15, 2021, Bumble temporarily suspended the option to filter matches by political preference to "prevent misuse". The move came after several women allegedly used Bumble to gather information from people who had attacked the United States Capitol, and then forwarded that information to the FBI. Bumble was criticized by many of its users for being perceived to "protect terrorists" by suspending the filter.[56] Bumble announced that it would be reinstating the option to filter by political preferences later that day.[57]
Paid subscriptions
In August 2016, Bumble announced the release of its paid service, Bumble Boost, which includes three premium features.[58] These features included Beeline, a list of users who have liked the user; Rematch, which keeps expired matches in a user's queue for 24 additional hours; and Extend, which allows users unlimited 24-hour extensions for matches.[59][60]
Use of artificial intelligence
In April 2019, Bumble launched Private Detector, an image classifier for detecting unsolicited nude photos. It allows users to decide if they want to view, block or report the image.[61][62] Bumble made the tool open source in October 2022.[62]
In February 2024, Bumble introduced Deception Detector, a machine learning model that detects fake user profiles. Of those accounts identified as spam/scam profiles, Bumble Inc.’s testing showed that Deception Detector was able to block up to 95% these accounts automatically.[63][64] That March, Bumble collaborated with Phaedra Parks, Parvati Shallow and Peter Weber of the Peacock reality show The Traitors to launch the feature.[65]
In August 2024, Bumble said it is developing a chatbot to help users with flirting.[66]
Other features
In June 2016, Bumble announced a partnership with Spotify that would allow users to connect a Spotify account to their profile to show their music interests.[67]
In March 2017, the company announced its plan to launch a career networking app, Bumble Bizz.[68] In October 2017, the company launched Bumble Bizz which also uses a woman-first interface.[4]
In September 2018, a "snooze" feature was added to allow users to pause activity and avoid using the app for some time.[69]
In June 2019, Bumble announced that it would be enabling in-app voice and video calls on all of its platforms, including Bumble, Bumble Bizz, and Bumble BFF. Users must match first before initiating a call.[70] Bumble's vice president of strategy reported "an 84 percent increase in video calls that were placed between users" during the COVID-19 pandemic.[71]
Security vulnerabilities
In June 2021, Stripe software engineer Robert Heaton found a security vulnerability in Bumble that would allow an attacker to obtain the exact location of its users via trilateration. Bumble fixed the vulnerability three days later and paid Heaton a bug bounty of $2000.[72][73]
In August 2024, researchers at KU Leuven in Belgium found that several dating apps, including Bumble, had vulnerabilities that would allow bad actors to obtain users' locations via trilateration.[74][75]
Users
As of 2024, Bumble had a reported 4 million paying users[76] and was the most downloaded dating application in the United States with 735,000 downloads.[8][77] Wolfe Herd stated that within the app's first eight months, it saw 5 million unique conversations initiated, all by women.[78] In April 2018, Bumble reported that 85% of users were "looking for marriage or a boyfriend/girlfriend", while 4% of men and under 1% of women were "looking for a hookup". They also reported that 25% of users had gone on a first date with someone they found on the app within the previous month.[79]
In October 2016, the app launched new photo moderation rules that banned mirror selfies, obscured faces, and photos of users in underwear among others.[80] According to The New York Times, as of March 2017, Bumble had more than 800 million matches and 10 billion swipes per month and was the second most popular Lifestyle app in the iOS App Store.[68]
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Bumble reported a 10.9% increase in monthly active users in the final quarter of 2020.[81]
As part of their IPO filing, Bumble announced in January 2021 that they had 2.4 million paying users.[82]
In August 2024, The Economist reported that 61% of Bumble users were men.[83]
Legislation
Bumble was the first dating app to explicitly moderate for unsolicited nude images, known as cyberflashing. In 2019, the app launched Private Detector, a feature that uses artificial intelligence to automatically detect and blur nude images.[61][62] In October 2022, Bumble released an open-source version of Private Detector model.[62]
In 2019, Bumble helped pass House Bill 2789 in Texas, a law that makes electronic transmission of sexually explicit material a punishable offense.[84]
Bumble launched the #CyberFlashingIsFlashing ad campaign in the UK to support the Online Safety Act. The U.K. government passed the bill in March 2022.[85][86]
In 2024, Bumble backed the CONSENT Act, a federal bill which "aims to provide protection for recipients of sexually explicit images, including images manipulated by artificial intelligence or machine learning."[87]
Reception
Feminist label
Bumble has been described as a "feminist Tinder".[88][89][90] Its founder has confirmed this identity, calling the app "100 percent feminist," although she has attempted to distance the app from Tinder in interviews.[91][3] Wolfe Herd shared in an interview with Vanity Fair the concept behind the app: "If you look at where we are in the current heteronormative rules surrounding dating, the unwritten rule puts the woman a peg under the man—the man feels the pressure to go first in a conversation, and the woman feels pressure to sit on her hands... If we can take some of the pressure off the man and put some of that encouragement in the woman's lap, I think we are taking a step in the right direction, especially in terms of really being true to feminism. I think we are the first feminist or first attempt at a feminist dating app."[91]
In June 2016, Bumble posted an open letter to its blog and blocked a user for sexist behavior after he had an outburst at a female user who asked him what he did for a living.[92][93]
In August 2017, the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer encouraged its readers to harass Bumble's staff to protest the company's support of women's empowerment.[94][95]
In August 2018, Bumble launched the Bumble Fund to support women-led startups.[96]
In February 2023, writer Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz wrote that "it often seems like that feminist twist is more marketing fodder than meaningful change to how our apps run our love lives."[90]
Lawsuits
In March 2018, Match Group sued Bumble arguing that it was guilty of patent infringement and of stealing trade secrets from Tinder.[98] In June 2020, an undisclosed settlement was reached between Match Group and Bumble to settle all litigations.[99]
In 2020, Bumble agreed to pay $22.5 million in a settlement over plaintiffs' claims that the company's auto-renewal processes were unfair. The class action lawsuit, filed in California, said Bumble charged consumers without their consent. Bumble admitted no wrongdoing in the case.[100]
Celibacy adverts
In May 2024, Bumble faced major backlash after launching a marketing campaign that entailed putting up billboards with captions such as: "You know full well a vow of celibacy is not the answer".[101][102] Users accused the campaign of shaming women who were not sexually active.[103] Bumble responded with a public apology, wherein the company said it would remove the ads and donate to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.[104]
