Bumble

It’s the 2020 election season, and political campaigns are competing for young voters – and turning to dating apps Tinder and Bumble for help.

Young campaign volunteers are using dating apps to chat with their matches and advertise for their candidates over dating apps, according to International Business Times. Some are even springing for premium versions of Tinder so they can change location and engage voters in other states. Still other app users are advocating for more political engagement, including announcing in their profiles that they only date registered voters.

Bumble is shutting down gay dating app Chappy, part of the suite of dating apps under parent company Magic Lab. Bumble will integrate the service into its own app, effective February 28th.

According to Culture Map Austin, Bumble is encouraging Chappy users to download Bumble and try it out, offering them a week of its premium service for free. Chappy is no longer displaying profiles so essentially the search function is turned off. By the end of February, all of Chappy’s user information will disappear from the app.

Chappy posted an FAQ about the closure on its website, stating: “We’re joining Bumble because we have the opportunity to take what we’ve built together here to the next level by creating a space for healthy and safe connections across the LGBTQ+ spectrum. Bumble is committed to fighting all kinds of inequality, and we’re excited to land our spaceship safely in the Bumble Hive.”

Match Group announced the roll out of new filter features for its star dating app Tinder, following suit with Bumble, who rolled out similar features late last year.

The filter features include both free and paid options, according to Tech Crunch, but Match Group did not disclose many details, other than comparing the features to Tinder U, which filters matches solely to other nearby college students. 

Match Group aims “to make the utility of Tinder better and more efficient,” according to CEO Mandy Ginsberg, who just announced she’ll be leaving the company after fourteen years at the end of February. 

A committee from the U.S. House of Representatives is investigating popular dating apps such as Tinder, Bumble and OkCupid following a report that found underage users and sex offenders were using the apps.

According to a report from AP, the House Oversight and Reform subcommittee on economic and consumer policy sent separate letters on Thursday January 30th to Bumble, Grindr, The Meet Group, and Match Group (which owns Tinder and OkCupid among others). The letters asked for information on “users’ ages, procedures for verifying ages, and any complaints about assaults, rape or the use of the services by minors,” according to AP.

The subcommittee is also seeking additional information on privacy policies for each of the apps, and what users see when they are asked to review or accept such policies. Recently, dating apps have also come under fire for third-party sharing of personal data, where user information wouldn’t be protected by the dating app’s own privacy policy.

Actress Sharon Stone was blocked on Bumble in late December, and took to Twitter to air her concerns publicly. Bumble responded and tried to restore her profile, but days later, Stone still wasn’t able to access it.

Stone signed up for Bumble to start dating again, according to reports. She was surprised when the female-friendly app quickly shut her profile down, claiming it was fake. She then posted about it on Twitter and Instagram, along with the screenshot of the message from Bumble saying she was blocked.

“I went on the @bumble dating [site] and they closed my account. 👁👁 Some users reported that it couldn’t possibly be me!” she tweeted. “Hey @bumble, is being me exclusionary ? 🤷🏼‍♀️ Don’t shut me out of the hive 🐝”

Recipient
Bumble

Bumble is this years recipient of the Editor's Top Pick - Innovative award. This dating service continues to grow and innovate in an extremely competitive industry, in fact we think so over all others. Thanks in part to its female friendly reputation and it's "Bee Kind" attitude which promotes respect and kindness this service has surpassed 55 million members (since launch). This is Bumble's second year in a row to earn this award which shows they want to continue to evolve and change and keep pace with what users expect from an online dating service.

So how did Bumble innovate this year? They added a number of new and USEFUL features including: