Bumble is getting rid of swiping, the CEO says

Will dating app distress finally eliminate swiping? For Bumble, at least, this appears to be the case.

in interview With Axios on Thursday, Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd confirmed that Bumble will do away with swiping, a hallmark of dating apps in the 2000s.

“We’re going to say goodbye to scrolling and hello to something that I think is revolutionary for the category,” Wolf Herd said.

Bumble plans to overhaul its app later this year, after several disappointing quarters in which the app was flat Lost paying users. In the first quarter of this year, Bumble’s number of paid users fell nearly 21% to 3.2 million, down from 4 million last year.

The app redesign is a very serious intervention, signaling to investors that the situation is serious. But like any good CEO, Wolfe Herd made some verbal moves to argue that Bumble is doing a very good job of losing money.

“This is a period of real transformation at Bumble over the last few quarters.” He said On this week’s quarterly earnings call. “We have implemented a deliberate reset of our member base. We made a clear choice to prioritize quality over quantity, focusing on engaged members with good intentions. This decision reduced overall scale, but significantly improved the health of our ecosystem.”

Based on Wolfe Herd’s previous comments about Bumble’s new direction, the company is expected to move toward artificial intelligence — Bumble is even working on an AI-powered dating assistant called beeWolf Herd has made a lot comments Over the years about how artificial intelligence will be a “supercharger for love and relationships.”

Of course, dating apps already use AI to determine what users should show each other. But Generation Z is turning more negatively toward in-your-face AI features, and Wolfe Herd has expressed interest in a more extreme future, such as having… Personal AI robots This history of other AI robots is for you. So, it’s unclear whether these Black Mirror-like initiatives will effectively attract users in their 20s. Bumble’s overhaul isn’t expected to launch until the fourth quarter of this year, so users will continue swiping for the time being.