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Image Credits:Getty Images for Vox Media / Getty Images12:06 PM PDT · May 7, 2026
Will dating app malaise yet termination disconnected the swipe? For Bumble, astatine least, that seems to beryllium the case.
In an interview with Axios connected Thursday, Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Heard confirmed that Bumble volition get escaped of swiping, the defining diagnostic of 2010s dating apps.
“We are going to beryllium saying goodbye to the swipe and hullo to thing that I judge is revolutionary for the category,” Wolfe Herd said.
Bumble is readying to overhaul its app aboriginal this year, pursuing respective disappointing quarters successful which the app consistently lost paying users. In this year’s archetypal quarter, Bumble’s paid users fell astir 21% to 3.2 million, down from 4 cardinal past year.
Redesigning the app is simply a beauteous superior intervention, signaling to investors that the concern is dire. But similar immoderate bully CEO, Wolfe Herd has done immoderate verbal gymnastics to reason that Bumble is doing a precise bully occupation astatine losing money.
“This is simply a play of existent translation astatine Bumble implicit the past fewer quarters,” she said connected this week’s quarterly net call. “We person executed a deliberate reset of our subordinate base. We made a wide prime to prioritize prime implicit quantity, focusing connected well-intentioned, engaged members. That determination reduced wide scale, but meaningfully improved the wellness of our ecosystem.”
Based connected Wolfe Herd’s past comments astir Bumble’s caller direction, the institution is expected to thin into AI — Bumble is adjacent moving connected an AI dating adjunct called Bee, and Wolfe has made galore comments implicit the years astir however AI volition beryllium “a supercharger to emotion and relationships.”
Of course, dating apps already usage AI to determine what users should beryllium shown to 1 another. But Gen Z is trending much antagonistic toward in-your-face AI features, and Wolfe Herd has expressed involvement successful much utmost futures, similar having personal AI bots that day different AI bots for you. So, it’s unclear if these Black Mirror-like overtures volition efficaciously pull users successful their 20s. Bumble’s overhaul isn’t expected to motorboat until the past 4th of this year, truthful users volition inactive beryllium swiping for now.
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Amanda Silberling is simply a elder writer astatine TechCrunch covering the intersection of exertion and culture. She has besides written for publications similar Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast astir net culture, with subject fabrication writer Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked arsenic a grassroots organizer, depository educator, and movie festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. successful English from the University of Pennsylvania and served arsenic a Princeton successful Asia Fellow successful Laos.
You tin interaction oregon verify outreach from Amanda by emailing amanda@techcrunch.com or via encrypted connection astatine @amanda.100 connected Signal.
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