Bumble Hints at New Social Features During Earnings Call

Dating app Bumble wants to extend its platform beyond dating and into social networking and virtual friendships through a new community feature – now dubbed “Hive.”

Hive is currently being tested, the company revealed in a recent earnings call with investors. While the company’s revenue projections have been lowered through the end of the year in part due to the app being pulled from Russia and the ongoing war in Ukraine, it is moving ahead on development projects.

Social networking has become an important part of Bumble’s growth strategy. Hive is in essence a revamping of its Bumble BFF friend-finding feature, and will offer things like group chat, polls and video calls to help people better connect over the app, according to Tech Crunch. The article pointed out that Hive focuses on helping people find “platonic connections through small communities.” In other words, Bumble is focusing on making the feature community-driven where people can drop in and out of conversations depending on their shared interests. 

Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said on the call: “As we have shared before, our approach is built on the insight that people want to find friends, acquaintances and connections through shared struggles and common joys: moving to a new city, navigating parenthood, finding a partner for hiking, or really anything else in between.”

She pointed out what was happening in Toronto, one of the places the company is testing Hive, where they found that users have created thousands of communities based on particular interests. Bumble also noted that the weekly average number of sessions for BFF members increased by two-thirds, and weekly time spent engaging on the app was up 16 percent.

Dating apps are looking for new ways to engage users, particularly younger users who are on social media and using non-dating platforms with more engaging content like TikTok to find dates. In fact, new dating apps like Desti and Snack are offering TikTok-style video feeds instead of traditional swiping formats like Tinder and Bumble.

Bumble has shared that it is looking into metaverse dating and virtual currency, though no details have been shared publicly. Tinder recently announced it was pausing Tinder Coins, its virtual currency, as well as metaverse dating plans.

In addition to Hive, Tech Crunch pointed out that Bumble is developing new astrology features, something that is very popular among young daters, new features for LGBTQ+ daters, and testing “messaging before match” as a feature along with new audio and video capabilities to drive revenue.

For more on this dating service, you can check our our Bumble review.