The dating app reshapes its core experience by giving men the opportunity to make the first move and extending the response window, a significant change to its platform.
The dating app Bumble has reportedly made a major change to one of the features that distinguished it from other dating apps. The platform will now allow either person in a match to send the first message, ending its long-standing women-first messaging rule for heterosexual matches. This change marks a significant shift for Bumble, which built its identity around giving women greater control over how conversations began.
Since its launch in 2014, women in heterosexual matches were generally required to initiate the conversation, while men had to wait for a message. The company now says its focus is shifting to giving users more choice in how they start conversations.
Men on Bumble can now initiate conversations.
Under the updated system, a man no longer has to wait for a woman to send the opening message after a heterosexual match. Either person can start the conversation. The change follows Bumble’s earlier introduction of its Opening Moves features, which allowed women to set a question that matches could respond to.
That feature was designed to reduce the pressure associated with sending the first message while retaining an element of women’s control over the interaction. The latest update goes further by removing the previous restriction on who can begin a conversation.
Match response time extended to 72 hours.
Bumble has also changed the amount of time users have to respond to a new match. The previous 24-hour window has been extended to 72 hours, giving users more time to decide whether and how they want to start a conversation. The adjustment comes as dating platforms face growing pressure to make online dating less repetitive and more engaging. Bumble has increasingly focused on features intended to improve conversations rather than simply encouraging more matches.
The messaging change represents more than a technical update. The women-first approach was central to Bumble’s identity and helped differentiate it from competing dating platforms. Bumble CEO and founder Whitney Wolfe Herd has previously described the company’s approach as being centred on creating relationships with greater choice and consideration for women’s needs. The latest move suggests the company now sees flexibility in initiating conversations as more relevant to users’ dating preferences.
For users, the immediate change is straightforward: the first move is no longer reserved for women, and matches have longer to respond. What remains to be seen is whether the new approach can improve user engagement without weakening the feature that originally made Bumble distinctive.
