 Bumble, one of the most popular dating apps out there looks like it's in danger of possibly going out of business. What does this say about online dating in 2023? I guess you could say that Bumble looks like it might fumble. Oh, man. David, so is Bumble the app that got popular because women had to message the guy first? Right, it's been around since 2014. Right, I've used it. We've all used it a little bit here and there. It's not my favorite app. So I'm not shocked to hear that it's going down. But the stock price is going down. It's plummeting right now. 82% off the peaks. I don't know if it's a good time to buy. I would not buy the stock, guys. So, David, I guess what's happening right now? Well, long story short, they're getting a new CEO. He's the former CEO of Slack. He's replacing the former billionaire founder, Whitney Wolfe, who actually came over from Tinder. And there was a whole crazy situation over there. And long story short, a lot of people are saying if this new CEO cannot revive Bumble, the only women's message first dating app, the whole thing is possibly going down. And what does that mean for the OLDA online dating app industry in general? So make sure you like, subscribe, and turn on your notifications. But first, check out Smala Sauce, because this is not a stock that's going down. In fact, it's only going up. Check out Smala Sauce. The shipments are going out soon. So if you order it now, hopefully it'll ship out by mid-November, guys. I'm really excited that everybody's gonna get to try it. So I guess, David, this Bumble going down, essentially, let's just assume the stock is not gonna be worth very much, and then the company is gonna have a lot of financial trouble. So you're saying do not buy the dip? Yeah, yeah, don't. Because it's $13 right now, and at a peak, it was like 78. Don't buy the Bumble dip. Anyways, so I guess, do you think it speaks more about the app itself because Bumble is a kind of unique dating app? Do you think it says more about what Bumble was trying to do versus what online dating is in 2023? Because other apps are more popular right now. Right, Hinge seems to be doing well. I heard, especially if you are a hot college kid, Tinder is the right thing to do, and of course, there's a whole other host, a more fringe, outlier, freaky, deaky, Maliki apps depending on how you live your life privately. What was one or two major pivots that Bumble tried to do recently that you think might have contributed to? So long story short, Bumble pivoted. They pivoted some of their resources. Obviously, they still have the dating side, but they wanted to add a friendship side, a business partner matching side, and just a general industry networking side as well as a sort of a, I don't wanna say like boss girl, I guess women's empowerment to become high level leadership in corporate or start your own company vertical. Right, the angle of the app for those who don't know, instead of the traditional guy sends a like to girl or girl sends a like to guy, and then they match and then a guy or girl can send the message first. Usually it's the dude, right? But in Bumble, only the woman could send the message and it had to be within 24 hours of her matching with you. It was a ticking time bomb. And then if she didn't message you in 24 hours, then the match would go away. But you could buy, and of course these were monetization features I guess implemented over time, you could buy like an extender coin. So you could extend it to be like, hey, you got another 24 hours. David, from a personal standpoint, and I'll tell my personal story, did you like Bumble? No. I didn't like Bumble. I used Bumble, I've used pretty much all the major dating apps. And I'll be honest, like Bumble was one of my least favorite. I did meet up with like one or two people maybe off of it. Do you put it at the bottom? Of the major ones. Of the major ones, yes. And it was like really like it was just not a good use case because I think at the end of the day it's kind of fighting, I want to say human nature where the guy wants to go out and message as many girls as possible. To be the pursuer. To be the pursuer. To be the pursuer and to send messages to a handful of women that he's attracted to and then some women come back. But would you say it was also possibly societal programming or human nature that the women were used to being the pursued? Yeah, and I do think that without making too many generalizations about women's dating patterns, I will say I think that when it comes to dating apps, women don't want, they don't want to be putting in all the work and messaging all the people, right? Like they'd rather have all the incoming and then sift through that, which is what happens and that's fine, that's what it is. So ultimately, do you believe this is more of a match.com stock price, a bumble stock price issue rather than overall, I don't feel like online dating is going anywhere, but there may need to be new life breathed into the industry. Well, I think Bumble was one of those concepts and they had good intentions with it, but I don't think it really fits into how the world works ultimately. But I will say this online dating to me, in my opinion, is still very useful and can be very complimentary to a lot of guys out there. So to the guys out there who are like, you know what, just get off dating apps, period. I'm like, hold on, hold on, you can still meet a lot of people through it, but there are tactics and a stamina that is involved with dating apps. And I also, the reason why I think online dating is important, because I feel like increasingly it's almost taboo to talk to people in public. Right. Like, you know what I mean? It's more viewed as obviously, prior to online dating, that was almost the only way you could meet people. I wish we could normalize more random talking in person, but just given maybe safety. Yeah, maybe just the way the society's changed. It's very unfortunate. Somebody was saying, man, I just feel like the amount of money they're trying to squeeze out of the consumer puts people off. And they were just like, man, you know what? A lot of guys, they just get their passports and then they can do any online dating app overseas or whatever, go to a bar overseas. People don't even want to deal with local dating dynamics anymore. Like I said, I understand the sentiment and I'm not telling guys are wrong if they won't have alternative routes of meeting people. But the dating app is still useful for at least meeting a lot of people. You have to use it correctly, but yes, it is very stressful. But we gotta talk. Bumble had a lot of interesting features. Did you know that you could get banned for ghosting somebody if they reported that you ghosted them? Also, there was a ton of ways for them to monetize. You could buy Bumble Boost, Bumble Premium, Super Swipe, Compliments, Spotlight, et cetera, et cetera. Like if you swiped on somebody that, because you didn't want to run out of your swipes, but then you found out that they swiped on you, you could pay $6 to $8 to get them back. But that was like for one person. Man, oh, this one guy sent a screenshot because you could, yeah, for what it's worth, I accidentally swiped left on you and then paid the $6 to get you back. No pressure in responding. That's hilarious. Yeah, so on the stock market, and the reason is, you gotta take a look at the stock price for some of these things. A lot of the dating apps not just Bumble are selling off. Yeah. A lot of people felt like the valuations were just out of control, even if they still have an active user base. I mean, even matched group, that stock is probably never gonna reach the all-time highs, but I think that they're the biggest conglomerate that owns all the dating apps like Hinge and OKCupid. So they're gonna be fine, but Bumble on its own, I just don't think is gonna work. Somebody said the whole concept of a dating app's business model was kind of weird because they want you to spend the most time on the app, but if they do a good job of matching you up to do the algorithm or AI, then you're gonna get off the app. Here's my thing. Yes, that is true. Of course, the app needs to make money, but at the end of the day, I think a good app can advertise itself if it does match people up. There are endless amount of people who wanna get matched up, and matched up doesn't mean you marry each other and then never go on the app again. Even if you just met them up, dated them, and then had a good experience, break up, you're gonna hop back on the app. So that's why I think Hinge's approach and the way Hinge marketed itself was really smart because Hinge used to say, Hinge, the dating app we want you to delete. What confidence. But I think Hinge is in this really interesting place right now. The reason why it's so successful, at least in North America, is because a lot of people do end up dating on it, but it's not necessarily because it's so youth-centric, it's not necessarily a marriage app. So it's almost like a relationship app where people might have met their last three, four, five significant others on Hinge, but then they get back on Hinge. What I think dating apps get wrong is trying to keep people on the app and having them never meet up because if you go through that long enough, you will quit the app. But I'm saying Hinge, a lot of people have met up off of Hinge. I'm not saying they got married, that's a whole different. Hinge has nothing to do with marriage, okay? If they can help you meet people in person, that's the most important thing. Right, somebody said, man, at the end of the day, girls were not messaging first, that's just not in their nature, that's not the way they've been socialized, not the way society is. Some girls who were on Bumble didn't even know that they had to send the first message. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie, after talking to a lot of girls who got on dating apps, they just went in there blind or their friend made their profile and was like, hey, use this app, I made your profile for you. You're saying they do not go on YouTube or whatever forums and look up like top 30 tips. Guys, let me tell you something. I've met girls off Hinge and they literally told me, I didn't even know that there was a spotlight page. Or what is it? Roses? Roses. I didn't even know that there was a rose page to look at. They were like, I was just on the app. I was like, yeah, you know, there's highlighted guys that are hot guys. You're saying they're not power users. No. Girls are not power users, guys, generally. The guys are the guys, you don't find buying an e-book, trying to break it down. The dating apps make most money off guys. That is what it is, guys, this is the life, this is how it's always been. This is just nature, okay? Somebody said, how come girls always say you better have a better opener than hey, but then girls on Bumble only say hey or hi oftentimes? That's really funny. Yeah, no, I do think that there are more like writer types though, like author types. You know what I mean more, I guess they like the English language. They like more floral, decorative language. I think that those girls would open up with something more creative. Somebody was just saying, man, I just can't wait for the new monetization that the Slack CEO thinks of. What are they gonna think of next? They already try to monetize off business networking, off friendships, of course, off hundreds of different ways of dating. Let me ask you, do you think Bumble, this is a tweak or literally they need to rehaul and change almost their whole model? I think that here's my Slack CEO. You can have this one for free. I think they could try to make it exclusive, almost like a mix between Raya and Hinge, where it's more exclusive than Hinge, and it's more, but not as exclusive as Raya, where you gotta be like on a jet with Bezos. You know what I mean? Like a middle point, because I think people like exclusivity. So I think that that's what I, I'm just throwing that out there for the Slack CEO, whatever, I'm not a CEO. Somebody said, I think that apps are fundamentally flawed because girls always just go after the top 2%, maybe 15% of guys at the most. So that means 85% of the guys that are funding the entire operation are just losing out. Why would they stay on the, in this whole world? I just have to ask, is it better? I, yes, when using dating apps, you have to manage your expectations, but is it not better than the other alternative of meeting people? Cause it still allows you to meet more people than you would if you were a software engineer sitting at home, barely getting out, only getting out two days a week meeting people on the weekends, right? Right. And then what, on those weekends, you gotta have a crazy personality to approach a bunch of strangers or set up a bunch of stuff with larger friend groups to meet those girls. So I'm just saying, guys, I know you're complaining, but I'm just saying, what's the other alternative? You either gonna fly to somewhere else to a different environment. You mean to a society that is essentially at a different timeline arc in societal development or time, capitalistic development? To the guys complaining, that's fine, complain, but what's the other alternative that is going to be as effective? I'm not saying it doesn't cost you more money or that you blah, blah, blah. It's just like the metaverse. Yeah, but you have to manage your expectations. Anyway, guys, let us know what you guys think of the comments section below. Will the new Slackie CEO be able to bring Bumble back from like going downhill? What do you think of the online dating environment in general? Is it only benefiting a very small selection of guys? Can everybody win from it? What does it say for the entire segment industry in general, or is this just a Bumble issue? And how would you fix Bumble? I think dating apps are not going away, but I think Bumble might. That's my take. Hey, man, let us know what you guys think. Until next time, we're going to hop off, boys. We out. Peace.