Bumble to let nonbinary users message anyone first Founded in 2014 by early Tinder co-founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, dating app Bumble’s claim cute Charlotte, NC girls to fame was that women “make the first move” – meaning that for straight couples, only women can message their matches first. Eight years later, discussions around gender and sexuality look a lot different. Now, the app is changing its gender options and nonbinary experience in a partnership with LGBTQ rights organization GLAAD. For matches with at least one nonbinary person, either person can message first. When talking to men, women still make the first move. Further, Bumble BFF users can now connect with people of any gender, whereas previously they could only match with users of the same gender. This comes after a pilot version in which nonbinary users weren’t able to message women first, as well as an expansion of gender options on Bumble earlier this summer. Previously, Date users were only able to choose whether they wanted to date men, women, or both. Now, both Date and BFF users are able to choose men, women, nonbinary people, two out of three, or all. (There are further options within those buckets, such as specifying if you’re cis or genderqueer, but you only search by those three.) They believe nonbinary users being able to message first will make it easier for queer people of all identities to date on the app – and that the switch “showcases pretty clearly that gendered rules on dating apps won’t ever work well if you actually want to be inclusive The move to enable users to match across genders is a significant product change, Bumble told Mashable, and one that requires a great deal of testing and user input analysis.
