Bumble spins its BFF friend-finding feature off into a standalone app

Seven years after Bumble launched Bumble BFF, the company is finally giving users their own app for making friends. Bumble has announced the release of Bumble For Friends, an app dedicated solely to finding friends in your area. The company started testing the app earlier this year in the United Kingdom and select regions of Asia, Mashable reported. 

Bumble For Friends will function almost exactly like Bumble BFF (which makes up 15 percent of Bumble’s monthly active users, a Bumble spokesperson told TechCrunch). However, there will be no need to download a dating app — something coupled-up users will likely be happy about. Like a dating app, though, you create a profile with a mix of photos, information about yourself and responses to prompts. It can include things like if you drink, your political affiliation, your relationship status and why you’re looking to make friends. Your Bumble For Friends profile will also have space to share some of your interests, like dogs or dancing — one of the things Bumble uses to help match you with potential friends.

There is one new feature on Bumble For Friends: the option to create a group chat. Basically, if you think any of your matches would also get along, you can add two or more of them to a group chat. To use this option, go into the conversations tab and pick a Bumble-suggested activity or add your own. You can also just give the group chat a name (which you can edit later on) if you don’t want to pick what to do. From there, you can invite matches and get talking. Invitees will receive a notification about the chat showing them your chosen title or the potential activity.

Bumble For Friends is free to download on Apple’s App Store or the Google Play Store. You can create a new account or log into your existing one and have your profile and matches transferred over. At that point, your Bumble BFF account will disappear from the original app, but you can still use Date or Bizz modes. Bumble doesn’t seem to be forcing anyone to switch to the new app, so you can still keep all your accounts in one place if you prefer.