Dating app Bumble from Whitney Wolfe, who was one of the Tinder co-founders, is now launching a new service designed to help users find BFFs.
Bumble became a popular dating app due to its model, which banks on women being the ones who make the first move. A new app called The Catch follows a similar model, encouraging women to pick their bachelors based on their personality, but Bumble still has its loyal fan base.
While Bumble is still primarily oriented toward dating, it now allows users to do more. In addition to finding romantic matches or friends with benefits, Bumble now enables users to find trustworthy BFFs.
Aptly called BFF, the new Bumble feature basically takes the same swiping and matching algorithms for dating and applies them to friendship.
How It Works
When switching to the Bumble BFF mode, instead of suggestions for dates users will see suggestions for friends, meaning people of the same sex that Bumble thinks might resonate with you.
Once you see a suggestion that catches your eye, you can swipe right and wait to see whether the other person thinks you could be a good friend as well. If you both swipe right, you have 24 hours to start a conversation and form that bond you're longing for.
Bumble will use different colors to display your conversations based on their category so you don't mistake your BFF conversations with your flirty dating ones. BFF conversations will appear in green, while those with a romantic potential will appear in yellow.
As Tech Crunch points out, Bumble will initially require users to have a single profile for both dating and BFF mode, but a dual-profile feature is reportedly in the works. Once that feature rolls out, users will be able to adjust their profile pictures and descriptions based on what they're after - friendship or hot dates.
Bumble users have already been using the platform for connecting with others as friends, not only dates, and have been requesting a dedicated feature for finding BFFs.
It remains unclear just how exactly Bumble will use its algorithms to differentiate BFF matches from regular ones, but it will pay "very close attention to interests and friends," Tech Crunch further notes. Bumble will get that information from users' Facebook profiles.
The new Bumble BFF feature is available with the latest update, which is now live for both Android and iOS.
"Bumble isn't just for dating! Now, you can select 'BFF' from app settings and see people around you looking for friends," reads the app's description. "Swipe on them just like usual, and matches will appear in your Hive marked with the BFF logo."
