Bumble Now Rewards Well Behaved Singles With Verified Profiles
As it approaches 1m users, Tinder rival Bumble is the latest app to add some user accountability to its product, by giving well-behaved singles a verified profile.
The new feature is called VIBee, and is a verified level on the app for users who exhibit good behaviour towards their fellow daters.
Whether you get honoured with a VIBee profile depends on criteria such as how often people respond to your messages, and how responsive you are to other people’s messages.
The algorithm also takes into account whether you’ve ever been reported by other singles for abuse or spam, and how often you swipe right to profiles.
The feature is similar to fellow dating app The Grade’s algorithm, which assigns all users grades, depending on their general behaviour and performance on the app.
Grades, which range from A+ to F, are calculated using criteria including: popularity, quality of profile, message responsiveness, spelling and behaviour.
By doing this, SNAP Interactive CEO Cliff Lerner told GDI this had resulted in a 43% decrease in the use of slang, spelling errors and offensive content.
In addition to this, he said women were liking men 21% more often, replying to their messages 47% more often, and responding to 56% of all initial messages they received.
By rewarding good behaviour, these two female-focused apps are making positive steps to improve the user experience, and hopefully making daters think twice about their actions, because there is an aspect of accountability.
Tinder recently took a different route with verified profiles, introducing blue tick status for “public figures, celebrities and athletes” who have accounts on the dating app.
One clever aspect of Bumble’s new feature is those who get a VIBee badge can choose to only view other VIBees when browsing through singles.
Because all those who received a verified profile are likely to be responsive and generally good online daters, this ups the chance of a positive match.
Earlier this year, Bumble also released a feature called Backtrack, which lets users replenish a swipe by shaking their mobile device.
Bumble, which launched back in December 2014, lets singles browse through matches, and if they mutually connect, the woman has 24 hours to begin the conversation.
In June, founder Whitney Wolfe said that 60% of matches on Bumble result in a conversation, and its user base has a male to female split of 55/45.
Wolfe told TechCrunch they plan to choose around 5-10% of the app’s user base for verified status, and then will continue to add more over the coming months.
The former Tinder employee also revealed the app has just under 1m users, with over 800,000 messages sent every day, and is seeing a 15% user growth every week.
Find out more about Bumble here.
