Dating app Bumble will no longer require women to make the first move | CNN Business
Dating app Bumble will no longer require women to make the first move | CNN Business
Ten years after creating a new model for dating apps with its “women make the first move” feature, Bumble is opening the door to men starting conversations on the app.
“We’re seeing a greater need for authentic human connections”
I’m going to take a wild guess and wager that this is about increasing engagement by increasing the amount of opening moves that are created on the platform.
Dating sites profit by increasing engagement with the platform, not by getting you an “authentic connection” that gets you off the platform and into a healthy relationship.
There’s a reason people are going analog again. They know these sites are just a thirst trap.
Calling it a thirst trap is too innocent. These dating app companies are scum-sucking vampires designed to make most people feel lonely and desperate enough to give them money in perpetuity. People just handed one of the most important and intimate aspects of their lives over to US tech bros, pressured everyone else to do the same, and two whole generations are not just having less sex than their parents, but half of them have never had a long-term relationship as they're approaching 30.
I feel like I saw somewhere that men message dozens of times more women than vice versa. I get their non-nuanced temptation but you can hardly call a system that encourages one gender to incessantly spam the other 'engagement'.
It's wild to me that anyone would say that sentence and not immediately realize they sound like an emotionless robot. Like damn, who would've thought people have a great need for authentic human connections? Not me!
This kinda shit you hear from people so deep in the world of product marketing is sickening and really shows how disconnected from they are from both reality and the point of selling a good product: benefitting people. I guess I'm just glad to see more stories of people ditching dating apps as they continue to become more predatory and less helpful.
Isn't this the one thing that made it stand out?
It’s not changing the default behavior, so it still has it.
Per the article, they’re introducing a new opt-in feature that a woman, enbie, or person looking for same-gender matches can set up - basically a prompt that their matches can reply to.
I think Bumble also used to prevent you from sending multiple messages before getting a reply, but maybe that was a different app... If they still do that in combination with this feature, then I could see this feature continuing to accomplish their mission of empowering women in online dating.
lol right? And wasn’t it for women to have a safer place to online date?
So they’re basically throwing women under the bus for money. Classy.
At least they're grown!
It doesn't sound that way. Can you explain how the specific change does that? Sounds like to me it's an option for women, and it's done in a way that limits how they can reach out first.
Yes, yes it was. It is now basically the same as every other thirst trap out there.
One thing I'll say about the old model was that out of all the dating apps, Bumble was the only one where every woman who I met or even just messaged with could hold a conversation. That one requirement of them reaching out first set the bar, and I knew they were making the choice to speak to me out of all the other guys they were drowning in. I ended up with more dates through Bumble than any other app, and even made great friends with some people I didn't romantically click with. Online dating is awful, or was for me, but Bumble was the least awful one of the bunch. The new model sounds not so great.
To me it's so so. They either texted, we had a conversation and ended up on a date the next week, or they sent a message, i answered, waited for a week to get a "lol".
really? I haven't used Bumble myself but I've heard stories of guys with inboxes full of women just saying "hi"
Bots. Bots everywhere.
In my experience all the women do start with hi however 100% of them engaged with the conversation after that. It felt much better then getting a bunch of matches but most of them ignoring you(understandably).
The story I heard was 9/10ths of the women on the platform had "I don't message first, you message me first" in their bio, so it was functionally a display case for morons.
Basically my experience
Look at Fabio over here.
Women hold conversations on every app? This feels like an extremely misogynistic take. I've literally never had a problem with women not being able to hold a conversation, like, some do and some don't. It's just an app and you aren't entitled to people's time.
Ha big doenvotes from the incel faction.
It's always so funny when people push these obvious self tells, like yeah you're not going to be a good match with everyone so a lot of conversations die but as soon as someone starts blaming an entire gender for not being able to hold a conversation its a pretty clear sign they're the problem.
So… tinder? Every other dating app?
they're all owned by match.com anyway.
I think we should get a blind match dating app, where we emphasize on the content and not on the visuals. You just add some information about what kind of a person you are, what you are looking for, etc. and after you match and exchange some messages, you can open the pictures.
But dating apps are turning into those cheap e-commerce sites where everyone judges the items by the packaging and no one actually cares about the content. And mind you in a lot of cases the pictures of the packaging are highly exaggerated or from a couple of years, from better times. And you know, no matter how shiny this package is, there would be a day you will need to throw it in the trash and you will need to decide whether to throw the product along or only the package.
Excuse my metaphors.
I can't imagine something more awkward than having to explicitly deny someone based on looks after having a good conversation.
I have an inkling that would result in people speedrunning all the stuff up until they can see what someone looks like...
Looks do matter, and everyone has different preferences.
The problem isn't that people are judging people based on only their looks, it's that these companies have tuned their matching algorithms to match people who enjoy each others appearance, and specifically don't like each other as people.
In reality, for a satisfying relationship you need both. It's really hard to be more than friends with someone that physically repulses you, and it's really hard to be more than friends with benefits with someone you don't like as a person.
By specifically tuning their system to only give you one, and never the other, they keep people in the grind. You might be pretty happy using these apps for hookups, but even there the algorithm will actively be working against you stumbling onto someone you might wanna meet more than once, because they want you back to swiping for the next person asap.
The fact remains that the matchmaking industry is doomed to be toxic in a capitalist system, because actually being good at it, also means getting rid of your customers.
I've met several partners off the internet through means where images were not involved, but it was clearly geared towards dating still (mainly reddit, if you would believe it). Some like to get the images out of the way early, others talk for weeks before that becomes an issue. There's still some that then drop out (I'm not the most attractive lad to ever be a lad, plus preferences exist, as you say) but others worked out great.
My strengths don't lie in my style or looks, so dating apps are basically useless to me, yet I have no trouble in attracting partners in circumstances where my personality is a bit more in focus.
I think there's a space for apps like those for sure. Since there's plenty where you can go purely or predominantly by looks, no one has to go for an app where that is the case.
My two best and longest (multi-year) relationships were on the Internet in places where I didn't know anything about looks of my partners.
With one of them, I said I love her before I first saw her. And I'm not the kind of person to take such words lightly.
But yes, you have a point about retaining audience here.
You should take a look at blindmate. It does exactly what you imagined. You just upload some Fotos, Friends of yours answer some questions about you and swipe for you. If you have a match you write a little bit and after every other message you unlock a bit more on the others profile. I don't know if it's currently available outside of Germany.
I think we should get a blind match dating app, where we emphasize on the content and not on the visuals. You just add some information about what kind of a person you are, what you are looking for, etc. and after you match...
And it's only the morning after that you're allowed to turn the lights on.
Any dating app where both people have to "like"/"swipe right" each other should allow either side to initiate tbh or at least opt out of the stupid matchmaking system and accept all incoming matches.
I was on the dating apps last summer after having been out of the dating pool for 6 years and the current crop of apps are pretty awful for men (amd probably women as well, maybe for difderent reasons). When I used dating sites in the early/mid 2010s most sites let anyone initiate a conversation so you didn't need to worry about the (usually paywalled) "like" system. These days literally everything is a Tinder clone and the only interaction you have with the app is like or dislike. I get why they did it because women receive so much bullshit from unsolicited messages, in my experience it devolved into just mashing the Like button over and over again blindly because it's a shitty numbers game and the odds aren't in your favor. There's no sense reading through detailed profiles and making thoughtful decisions when it's rare to get a match anyways. Easier to like every single profile and then be the one to filter out matches once they come in. If the harassment is going to primarily target women and women are the ones who need to be more selective in their matches, the dating apps should let women be the ones to pick matches, or better yet give each and every user a toggle that lets them accept matches from anyone, because that makes it easier to get over the hurdle of not receiving any matches at all.
I eventually gave in and paid for the Tinder upgrade that lets you like an unlimited amount of times. I just mindlessly mashed the like button until the queue was empty every day. Before long, matches were actually happening. Two months into that nonsense I actually got a perfect match (she sent the first message) and we've been together for 6 months now. I absolutely love her and I'm glad it worked out, but damn was dating on Tinder, Bumble, OKCupid, and POF a horrible experience all around. All owned by the absolutely dreadful Match.com now of course. The prospect of your perfect match being hidden behind a stupid loot box RNG style gacha system is absolute insanity, because that's what it is. You have a limited number of likes and the profiles you get to see are seemingly picked at random.
Five bucks says all the first messages from men are asking if the woman chose the bear, and if they answer yes calling them some slur.
I don't get it: a bear just makes more sense. Despite their intimidating appearance most are gentle creatures. Their fur and mass can provide warmth, and if you're injured they can easily carry you out of the woods.
If you pick "random man" you might get a twink and I feel like they're more of a liability in a survival situation.
Turns out they never do lol
I used bumble for a bit and saw women's bios that said that they are not making the first step.
Didn't RTFM...
I mean on bumble, they did. It’s why I prefer it when I was single. Felt a bit better to allow the women to make the first move as tinder it felt like if you weren’t peacocking in some fashion, you were doing it wrong. Felt better for either gender. Bummer to hear they’re turning into tinder+.
By and large, women on Bumble don't make the first move. Opening with "Hi" isn't a move, which is what many women on Bumble do to qualify the app's requirement that the woman speaks first.
I've lost track of how many matches I've had on Bumble where they didn't quite get the point of the app, and would open with something like "Impress me". Like, there's a hundred other apps you could use if you don't actually want to make the first move, why use the ONE where you're supposed to if you're not going to do it?
The CEO of Bumble's parent company, Richard Pictograph, pushed for the feature
The bar is no longer "up here".
