You may have seen the Facebook ads for Bumble's new feature called BumbleBFF. The social dating app where "women make the first move" has designed a setting called "BFF." The idea is that instead of searching for a romantic partner, you search for a partner in crime. The same rules apply: swipe right if you like the picture, profile or whatever you are looking at, and swipe left if you don't like what you see or read.
Since I am home for the summer, I can hang out with my high school friends, and since I live so close to the college I attend, I can hang out with friends who have stayed close to campus, but still I was curious about the app.
Maybe I could make a new friend? Nothing is wrong with that, right? I mean, I did meet my boyfriend on Tinder, so these kind of apps have worked for me in the past.
I downloaded the app.
The layout is similar to Tinder, in the sense that you can adjust the age range you are looking for, the area to cover, as well as pictures and bio.
Alright! Here we go — I wonder what kind of people use this app? Will there be only female profiles or will there be guys looking for friends too?
First profile pops up:
One picture. No bio. Swipe left!
Word to the wise: if you are ever on any of these apps, you should always have multiple pictures and a bio. Pro tip: all your pictures shouldn't be you and a group of people.
Next:
Cute dog! Swipe right!
I continued swiping right and left, and unfortunately I had gone through all the profiles my settings allowed within 10 minutes.
That's it? What if none of them like me? Should I switch my settings?
I did not touch my settings and just decided to wait it out. The next morning I woke up with a match notification.
YES! SUCCESS!
Like the normal Bumble function, the girl has to make the first move, so not knowing if my match would message me first I sent: "Hi!" I know it's really lame, but in my defense I agonized over what to say for 10 minutes. And yup, that was the best I could come up with, but it worked.
She replied! Oh my goodness! What did she say?
It may seem weird trying to make friends over an app, but let me tell you, the conversations I have had with my four matches (yes, that's all I got) resemble the conversations I have with friends I met the old fashioned way. We talk about our exes, our passions, the triumphs and strifes we face in our jobs and just about anything else that is normal for friends to talk about; the only thing is that we've have not yet met face to face.
Now, if I had to make one critique of BumbleBFF, it would be the fact that there are not that many users. This could be because people do not know about the function, or the app itself (Tinder has 50 million downloads, while Bumble has 5 million), or the fact that people don't think they can make friends on the platform, but if I have said twice already, let me say it a third time: if we can make romantic connections on Tinder that sometimes lead to marriage, why can't we make friendships that lead to us being a bridesmaids at the other's wedding?
