Bumble

Dating app Bumble is looking to make its stock market debut in February, likely in time for Valentine’s Day, according to a report from Bloomberg who broke the news.

The female-forward dating app was rumored to be planning its IPO for 2021, but there was no date or even timeframe specified. The company is backed by investment firm Blackstone Group, and according to Bloomberg, has already confidentially filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public. In 2019, Blackstone acquired a majority stake in what was known as MagicLab, now rebranded as Bumble, which owns the Bumble apps and Badoo among other dating apps. At the time of the purchase, MagicLab was valued at about $3 billion.

Dating app usage has increased significantly this year, in part due to the global pandemic. But as we go into cuffing season and usage continues to skyrocket, privacy experts from the Brookings Institute are cautioning dating app users to be careful with sharing their personal information.

The research firm notes that online dating has been increasing rapidly in the last decade, especially since the debut of dating app Tinder in 2012. Thirty percent of American adults had tried online dating in 2019, compared to just 13% in 2013.

This year however, there has been an explosion of new online daters. Match Group (which controls 60% of the dating app market with apps like Tinder, OkCupid, and Hinge), reported a fifteen percent increase in new subscribers in the second quarter of 2020, and a record-breaking 3 billion swipes on Tinder in one day in March when lockdowns began. From March to May of 2020, OkCupid saw a 700% increase in dates and Bumble had a 70% increase in video calls, Brookings points out.

Image: Bumble

Dating app Bumble is offering its users a guidebook for dating as we enter the new year, after COVID disrupted social norms in 2020.

The company conducted a survey of its users to find that 40% admitted they no longer knew how to date in person, and a whopping 2/3 of respondents said navigating the COVID dating landscape made them uncomfortable. Bumble responded by offering a new guidebook entitled Bumble’s New Dating 101 in 2021 to carve a path forward for these uncertain daters. The guide includes how to have a conversation about dating, how to approach sex and intimacy, and how to safeguard your mental health during a pandemic. 

Dating app Bumble was informed earlier this year that its software had vulnerabilities that could expose the personal information of its 100 million users around the world.

Researchers from Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) found a problem with the app’s API that allowed them to access personal data for all of its users across platforms, including details such as their political leanings, astrological signs, education, height, weight, and even how far away they were in addition to the city they lived in, according to Threatpost. Another problematic issue for Bumble was that the research team was able to bypass the payment process for premium services, effectively accessing them for free. 

Dating app Bumble introduced a new update for its “unmatch” feature to help prevent bad actors from trying to hide on the app.

According to Tech Crunch, this new feature is a safety upgrade for users who want to report abusers on the app. Before, it was easy for a user leaving abusive messages to hide from their match by pressing the unmatch option, because the conversation thread would disappear from both users’ message history. This made it harder for people to report abuse on the app – there was no digital trail.

The online dating market is booming, and is expected to grow to $9.9 billion by 2026, thanks to leading apps like Tinder, Bumble, eHarmony, Hinge and other popular platforms.

New research by Market Growth Insight shows that the dating services market’s expected goal of $9.9 billion in 2026 is up from $6.7 billion in 2018. The dating market continues to grow with a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 5.2% to achieve that marker. Of this, North America contributes to 37% of that growth, but Asian markets are quickly picking up speed.