Bumble overhauls ‘women-first’ messaging model amid revenue decline
The platform’s latest financial results show a continued drop in paying users, coinciding with a strategic shift away from its founding ‘women make the first move’ mandate.
Bumble has announced a global update to its core messaging functionality, allowing men to send the first message in heterosexual matches. The change marks a significant departure from the dating app’s founding principle established in 2014, which exclusively granted women the power to initiate contact. Alongside this shift, the platform has extended the time limit for recipients to respond to a match from 24 hours to 72 hours.
The overhaul was detailed by founder and chief executive Whitney Wolfe Herd during the company’s latest financial earnings report. The announcement coincides with results showing a continued decline in both revenue and paying users, suggesting the operational pivot is an attempt to revitalise engagement in a competitive market.
According to internal user surveys, 66 per cent of women reported a preference for men to send the first message. Bumble stated that during testing phases, opening messages became more evenly distributed between genders, and overall chat initiation increased. The company described the update as a “global evolution to its signature conversation experience” driven by a desire to reduce pressure and accommodate the busy schedules of modern users.
Wolfe Herd emphasised that the change aligns with the company’s original intent to design an experience centred on women’s needs. “Being women-first was never about prescribing just one way to connect,” she said in a statement. “This evolution isn’t a departure from our founding vision, but the realization of it.”
To address concerns regarding the quality of interactions, the app will now prompt users who attempt to send low-effort messages, such as one-word openers, to be more thoughtful before sending. This follows the introduction of an “Opening Moves” feature two years ago, which allowed men to initiate contact by responding to prewritten prompts, though the new update removes that restriction entirely.
