Bumble Monetizes its Dating App with BumbleBoost
Contributed by: kellyseal on Friday, September 30 2016 @ 07:02 am
Last modified on
Female-focused dating app Bumble has been available for free to its users, but now the company is offering a premium paid service for those who want to use its brand new features.
The paid version of the app includes three important features aimed at competing with other popular “tiered” dating apps like Tinder, which also offers optional paid features to help provide a premium matching experience.
Bumble’s first feature, named “Beeline,” will offer its members a line-up of users who have already “liked” them, so they can skip swiping and match with their likes by choosing “yes,” with the intention of making the process more efficient.
A second paid feature, called Rematch, gives users another opportunity with matches they might have been undecided on before. With Bumble, matches expire - meaning if a match has been in your match list for more than 24 hours without a conversation started, it disappears from your list. With Rematch, you can choose to keep expired matches on your list and get another chance to strike up a conversation.
The last paid feature entitled “Busy Bee” is for those daters who haven’t been keeping up with their matches like they should. Busy Bee lets you extend the 24-hour window so you can have another day to match someone. Previously, this was offered on a limited basis and only to male users, but now unlimited extensions are allowed for both male and female paying users.
While the new features will definitely help Bumble users with chances of connection and matching more than the free version, Rematch and Busy Bee seem to be focused on the same goal – giving matches a second chance, which seems redundant. However, the company is smart in taking a different approach from Tinder, which implemented limits on some of their features in order to gain more paying customers, such as limiting swiping capabilities (a core appeal of Tinder). Bumble has chosen to keep the same basic app for free, and only added paid features as options for those who would like them.
Bumble may open their dating app to advertisers as Tinder has done for additional revenue streams, but for now, the app remains an ad free experience, adding to its user appeal.
Bumble users will be able to pay for three new features for $9.99 per month, with discounts available if they prepay for 3 or 6 months.