Finding a connection on Bumble works differently now, with the dating app changing one of its flagship messaging rules.
Bumble is now letting any user make the first move, moving away from one of its signature features, which only allowed women to send the first message to heterosexual matches. In addition to letting men message first, the dating app company is giving users more time before a chat expires, broadening the reply window for matches from 24 hours to 72 hours.
In its announcement of the change, Bumble said the changes were informed by member feedback, product testing, and behavioral insights. The company cited internal Bumble data from a survey of 2,267 women Bumble users in 2024 that revealed that two-thirds of them preferred when men message first as it made “dating feel less pressured.”
“While women making the first move was a radical idea, being women-first was never about prescribing just one way to connect,” Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of Bumble, said in the announcement. She added, “today, our community is asking for more flexibility, less pressure, and more opportunities to create real, meaningful connections and that is what this new experience provides.”
Data from the initial testing in Canada showed a positive response to the updates, with around half of surveyed members saying the lengthened reply window made their experience on the app better. The pilot test also revealed that women in particular responded positively to the updates with around 91% saying they still felt in control of their dating experiences.
But the move is more than just about the user experience, it marks a significant departure from the signature feature that defined the brand’s 11 years in business.
Founded by Wolfe Herd in 2014, Bumble initially stood out from its competitors in the dating app economy by centering its user experience around women, leading to their signature feature: women message first. But a decade later, users have access to new technologies, and younger users have developed different dating behaviors that Bumble needs to adapt to in order to remain competitive.
In May 2026, Bumble introduced an AI assistant called Bee, touting it as a digital matchmaker. It also rolled out the Opening Moves feature, which allowed women to set questions for their matches to respond to.
Still, for many users online, the move doesn’t necessarily evolve the app so much as it removes what made it stand out in the first place.
“So Bumble just became regular Tinder with a yellow background? Defeats the entire point of the app,” a user said on X. Another added, “The only thing that made it not Tinder, and they surveyed it away.”