Dating App Bumble Preparing for $6B-Plus IPO | Hacker News Reader

Dating App Bumble Preparing for $6B-Plus IPO

bloomberg.com

15 pointspseudolus11 comments

Bumble was refreshingly better than Tinder in about 2014-2018 or so. Making it so the woman has to write first solved a lot of dating app problems:

- Women getting overwhelmed by too many messages and fleeing the app

- Men being able to determine which of their matches are actually interested vs. not. It's so tiring to send dozens of messages and not get a response. It's a really nice signal when a women actually writes you first.

But now, Hinge is the champion. The prompts, the scrolling vs. swiping. Combining messaging with swiping is really smart. You're able to add a little touch to your match request but you also don't have to see the failed ones (the ones who didn't write you back).

Hinge's redesign worked out quite well. https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/9/18297278/hinge-designed-to...

No thanks. Bumble is yet another example of an arrogant tech company forcing its ideology and values on the world. I really don’t want a monoculture where even dating is inaccessible if you aren’t a progressive: https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/24/bumble-app-demands-you-...

Not to mention that the actual experience of Bumble is terrible. Like most dating apps it is a major time sink and money pit, and has low return for men unless you’re attractive in a very mainstream way. The League, as a comparative example, is much more cleverly designed. It avoids turning dating into a second job.

> forcing its ideology and values on the world

It’s literally just a spiced up terms and conditions message saying you won’t be a racist and abide by the terms of service. It’s not “inaccessible” if you’re not a progressive, you’re just upset/offended that a private platform mentioned “black lives matter”.

Dating or rather, relationships do take effort not unlike a second job. I don't know what that says about you.

I was referring to activities like swiping perpetually, or behaviors like ghosting - things that take time but do not ultimately help people connect. These apps encourage a lot of window shopping and there is certainly a power imbalance in favor of women in most dating apps, but particularly in Bumble since only women can initiate conversations. All of these are unrelated to the actual effort of cultivating a relationship.

Fair enough. A lot of these features actually just aim to engage these people and are not straightforwardly informing them of their attractiveness to the market, because that makes money apparently. I agree that it's unrelated and even perhaps unnecessary.

That article is a remarkable bit of culture-war pearl clutching. Corporations are free to participate in PR posturing , and you’re free to not use their service.

Suggesting Bumble will lead to a monoculture is hard to take seriously. There’s hundreds of dating apps catering to all sorts of communities. There’s J-date for Jewish people, Grindr, ChristianMingle. There’s also the misogynistic, transphobic, and likely racist Righter.

You criticize Bumble for being a "time sink" but you like the League because it is like a second job"...which one is it?

OP's post says "It avoids turning dating into a second job."

The League limits you on number of prospective matches per day and it also rewards engagement and punishes lack of engagement. There is no swiping thousands of times, and no window shopping. You get to see a certain number of matches each day and those are all the matches you get to consider. It forces people to actually connect with low time investment. Their CEO, Amanda Bradford, has some interesting presentations/interviews you can search for that talk about their design philosophy.

Quite a bubble we are in

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