Singles aren't the only ones feeling the ache from dating app fatigue — Wall Street is too. The company projected another year-over-year decline in paying users in the fourth quarter, as well. Bumble Inc. Bumble, Inc. Deflating investor energy around dating apps mirrors a national outcry of "swipe fatigue," following a decade of the apps' meteoric rise.
Dating app leaders are pivoting to tackle swipe fatigue and encourage more meaningful user experiences through limits on matches and changes to who can start conversations.
Bumble, for example, was built on the premise of letting women make the first move in a match. Only women could send the first message in a conversation. In April, the company announced a new feature called "Opening Moves" that lets men message first in response to a pre-selected question from the woman in the match. Similarly, Hinge announced in September that it would limit users' simultaneous match conversations to reduce unanswered messages.
The company said it helped "daters shift their mindset from quantity to quality of matches" and encouraged users to follow through with their matches. On Match Group's earnings call, the company signaled that this new feature was already helping increase response rates on the app. Bumble founder and chair Whitney Wolfe Herd said during Bloomberg's Technology Summit in May that the platform "will not be a dating app in a few years" and instead one for broader "human connection.
Bumble CEO Lidiane Jones said in an earnings release that the company is executing "plans to reimagine Bumble App to enable the next generation of online-to-real-world connections. To that end, the company has a lineup of product releases prepared for , a Bumble spokesperson said.
