Bumble ditching swipes as online dating slows

Yahoo Finance's Head of News, Myles Udland, and Julie Hyman discuss Bumble's (BMBL) decision to get rid of swipes as online dating slows.

Video Transcript

00:00 Speaker A

that uh the Bumble CEO gave an interview to Axios and said they are getting rid of the swipe in order, you know, the swiping left and swiping, I always forget which one is what you like and which one's wrong.

00:13 Speaker B

Swipe right is good. Swipe right's good. Yeah.

00:14 Speaker A

Okay, so swipe right is good, swipe left, Okay. They're getting rid of it to be replaced by some sort of mysterious thing that's going to be amazing. But the backdrop for this is online dating, um, has been seeing declines. I talked earlier in the week to the CFO of Match.com, who talked about how they're still trying to increase engagement, um, and that their revenue per user has gone up even as their users have gone down. Also matches experimenting with in-person events. Did you know that?

00:47 Speaker B

Did not know that.

00:48 Speaker A

Yeah.

00:48 Speaker B

I'm not up on the latest trends in the dating space.

00:50 Speaker A

But the but the other backdrop for all of this is that dating is down sharply among young people. I keep seeing this this study cited and I keep citing it that high school seniors in the past year, like 46% of them have gone on a date. It was 80%, however long ago, a decade ago, whatever it was. It's, you know, so there's just not as much demand for dating period, I guess and for online dating specifically.

01:21 Speaker B

What should the uh what should the new action be? I said it should be swipe up.

01:27 Speaker A

Swipe up. Um what should the new action be? A double tap? I don't know, like, yeah, there's I don't there's only so many things that you can

01:42 Speaker B

Yeah, I mean, the problem with Bumble is, uh, and it's sort of, I mean, I would say that Bumble is one of the definitive millennial products of like that that mobile era. So like, you know, I know Uber is now in the S&P 500 and Airbnb and like, right? But I kind of think Bumble's in that group, Door Dash, like they

02:02 Speaker A

Were you ever on Bumble?

02:03 Speaker B

Of course. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was a time when I wasn't married and didn't have, you know,

02:07 Speaker A

Well, I don't know what the I don't know what the timing of Bumble's Hayday was versus

02:11 Speaker B

It's Hayday was like, I don't know, 13 to 17, maybe. Um, maybe a little bit later than that, but it was like right in that right in that, you know, and I think I don't think Whitney Wolf heard as much older than I am. I think we might be right around the same age.

02:26 Speaker A

Yeah.

02:26 Speaker B

Um, so at any rate, like the problem was that you were going to make your core user base, which is like very focused millennials who still kind of trusted social media. Uh this is like Instagram 1.0. everyone's got the great pictures, yada yada and like, oh, this is the internet can be a force for good. So we all went on Bumble, been to multiple Bumble weddings. And then the problem is then people get married.

02:53 Speaker A

Yeah.

02:54 Speaker B

and that's it.

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