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Spokespeople for Bumble, the free dating (and professional networking) platform founded in 2014 by American entrepreneur Whitney Wolfe Herd, former co-founder of Tinder, even talk about a new era of dating. Perhaps an excessive assumption, but today’s announcement from the Texan company is important for at least two reasons: because it is accompanied by a renewed design of the brand (complete with a new logo) and because, above all, it opens up a new experience of ” product”, made up of updates and additional features aimed at guaranteeing women more choices regarding the ways in which they can connect with community members. At the basis of this step forward by Bumble there is first of all the awareness of a profoundly changed scenario, in which the majority of single women active on the app (88% to be precise, according to data provided by Bumble) attribute to equality the meaning of “personal and autonomous choice to decide what is right for oneself”. Another fundamental piece of the new course of the service is having interpreted the feedback collected from the community about the problems affecting women online, with actions aimed at “banning” body-shaming content, non-consensual materials and gender discrimination , using artificial intelligence and machine learning to automatically block spam, scams and fake profiles.
The evolution of “make the first move
”Bumble, its managers explain, is therefore ready to write a new chapter in its evolution, focused on improving the experience of using the platform, and does so by introducing the first of a series of updates that will mark the near future of the app. “Opening Moves” is in fact a new function thanks to which women can set a question to which the users with whom the match has taken place can answer within 24 hours, providing the latter with other tools to get in touch, different from the popular dynamic that sees women as the conversation starters. In other words, the app now expands the options for making the first move, introducing new connection choices and a faster and more personal profile creation process, as well as making available a basket of options relating to what you look for an appointment. In short, with Opening Moves, Bumble guarantees women constant control of the relationship, giving them the possibility of following the app’s suggestions (and here the capabilities of the algorithms come into play again) or of structuring a personal one, in complete autonomy. Substantially changing, as the CEO of the company, Lidiane Jones, underlined in a note, the level of the online dating experience, “moving from a static approach to giving women more options on how to get involved”. This thesis was confirmed by the results recorded with the testing of the new functions, which confirmed how the availability of Opening Moves improved the start of chats and response times, extending the duration of the conversation.
More extensive and detailed compatibility
To respond to another need widely shared by women, namely the fact of knowing something about their potential match before connecting (around 80% of them swipe right only after seeing the entire profile), and to to help people better communicate what they are looking for, Bumble has also updated the app in the “What are you looking for in your next meeting?” section, including a large gallery of meeting options and activating the possibility of selecting up to two “dating intentions” to show on your profile. Another front subject to upgrade is therefore that of compatibility, made decidedly simpler and faster in the phase of identifying the points in common with the potential match. And even in this case artificial intelligence comes into play, with the proprietary machine learning algorithm “Who Likes You”, which manages a daily set of four pertinent and relevant profiles, recommended based on preferences and past matches.