Men will soon be able to message first on Bumble

On Bumble, the app that started with the ethos of "women making the first move," men will now be able to message first, according to the company's latest earnings call.

"Now, for the first time on Bumble, by default, anyone will be able to send only one single opening message, and the conversation does not progress until the recipient responds," Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said on yesterday's earnings call for Q2 2026.

No more "women make the first move"

Wolfe Herd founded Bumble in 2014 as the feminist response to Tinder, of which she was also a part of the founding team. Originally, in heterosexual matches, only women could message first. But the app has been trending away from that for some time, as two years ago it launched "Opening Moves," a way for men to technically message first by responding to a prompt on a woman's profile. (The app has since sunset Opening Moves in Australia and Mexico, though.)

Additionally, Bumble is also extending the time limit to respond to the first message, from 24 to 72 hours. "We are also addressing another major complaint that existed from our members," Wolfe Herd said.

In tests, Bumble users saw increases in chat initiations and mutual chat rates. The new rules will roll out globally by the end of this month, Wolfe Herd said.

Both real-life and AI on Bumble

Wolfe Herd also announced that Bumble will be leaning more into real-life experiences. "I am a firm believer that the future of meeting people in groups will become more important," she said, and confirmed that Plans, a rumored event-curation feature, is coming as a standalone app.

At the same time, Bumble is planning to integrate AI more. As Mashable reported in May, Bumble is getting rid of the swipe, but Wolfe Herd clarified yesterday that the app's upcoming AI dating assistant, Bee, isn't replacing it.

"Let me be clear: Bee is not replacing the swipe. We are not aiming for an AI-driven experience. Bee is simply the intelligence under the hood," she said.

"What will replace the swipe, I will be keeping under wraps a bit longer for competitive purposes," she said. "But it is designed to generate more immediate interactions, and most importantly, better outcomes, mimicking real life and eliminating the friction and delay that exists in current dating app models." Early feedback has been positive for Gen Z and millennial women and men, she continued.

Bee will apparently have an important role in how the new Bumble experience will be delivered, "but never degrading the human-first approach that we will always adhere to," according to Wolfe Herd.

Even more changes coming to Bumble

When Wolfe Herd first announced Bee in March 2026, she said that the app was developing a new tech stack (the set of technologies that build an app), with a targeted launch of the second quarter of this year. But yesterday, she said that due to a data migration delay, it's been delayed. New features, like profile and onboarding updates and more compelling ways to meet people IRL, are coming in early 2027, she said.

She also said that the app will also make the free experience more compelling, like offering limited access to "Like You," a usually-paid feature where users can see who's already liked them.

The app is re-architecting subscriptions to be simpler, and is planning on releasing a higher subscription tier designed for "mutual serious intent."

This news comes as Bumble's total revenue and paying users continued to decline in Q2 (15.2 percent and 16.4 percent, respectively, compared to Q2 of 2025). In June, Reuters reported that Bumble is considering a sale. Its announcement that it's killing the swipe upset some users, and it remains to be seen how they will react to all of these additional changes.