Lisa Jones, CEO of Bumble, informed investors that the dating app will appear differently upon relaunch. According to Jones, there is a re-examination of the notion that women should always initiate contact.
When Bumble relaunches later this year, female customers may have a different user experience.
It’s possible that Bumble will remove the feature that set it apart from its rivals now that Linda Jones is the new CEO. Jones expressed her doubts about women “making the first move” on Bumble to investors during a Q4 earnings call.
During the call, Jones stated, “For a subset of our customers, it feels like a burden.”
The app has made a point of focusing on women since Whitney Wolfe Herd established it in 2014. Under Wolfe Herd, discussions about deleting the function started, but Jones started making changes to Bumble as soon as she came over in November.
Now, as Bumble works out new ways to let its users interact without women needing to communicate first, a relaunch is anticipated in the second quarter of 2024. Men being able to message first and women being able to select pre-written greetings are two possible modifications.
The adjustments Bumble is thinking of making in preparation for its relaunch highlight how competitive the modern dating app market is, with companies creating these applications frequently experimenting with new features and payment models to draw users in. One such tactic is to provide progressively more expensive tiers.
As part of a series of actions to “transform our organization and accelerate our product roadmap,” Bumble cut 350 jobs in late February, according to a prior statement from Jones. She started assembling an executive team at Bumble at the same time, consisting of former Slack coworkers.
In the meantime, those who previously relied on dating apps have taken to social media to voice their grievances and share tales of having their profiles deleted. Some have explored for solutions, like creating Google Docs with the text “date-me.”
Prior to it becoming overrun by people trying to hook up, a user told the sources that Bumble was previously a superior option to Tinder.
Bumble tells that additional information on the relaunch will be released in the upcoming months.
