Bumble rolls out Bumble Bizz networking app to the U.S., Canada, elsewhere

You can find your best friend, your partner, and now, your next business venture, all with a single app. Bumble, the female-forward app that shook up the online dating scene when it first appeared in app stores in 2014, is now expanding its reach even further and taking on LinkedIn as it introduces Bumble Bizz. The new feature is now available in the U.S., Canada, U.K., France, and Germany.

Bumble Bizz doesn’t seek to match you with the love of your life, but rather the employer of your dreams — or perhaps a mentor — because you’re a strong, independent woman who puts her career first, right?

The setup will be much the same as the Bumble you know and love. You’ll create a profile (though it’ll be more of a résumé and completely distinct from your dating profile), and fill it in with information about your industry, your current job, your education, and other relevant details. Using this data and your location, Bumble will then try to match you with other professionals from whom you might benefit, or whom you might help as well.

You’ll be able to match up with either men or women, but staying true to form, Bumble will always have the female send the first message.

According to Whitney Wolfe, Bumble co-founder and CEO, this sort of a feature “was always part of the overall vision — to enable people to connect at the key engagement points in life. For love, for friendship, and now, for network.” After all, the whole point is to form connections, and those made in a professional capacity can be among the most important of our lives.

Sure, Bumble Bizz isn’t meant to replace a network like LinkedIn — it won’t help you curate an ongoing online network of colleagues past, present, and future. But it will help users make instantaneous discoveries (after all, you have to act fast on Bumble, given the 24-hour window of time you have to start a conversation), as well as encourage women to be a bit more proactive in having meaningful dialogues about their careers.

“I think a lot of women to this day struggle with feeling respected and feeling like an equal when it comes to business connection,” Wolfe said. “They feel that sometimes when they’re approaching something in a purely platonic or business connection, they feel like the conversation goes in a different direction.” But hopefully, Bumble Bizz can help address this issue.

Update: Bumble Bizz is now available in the U.S., Canada, UK, France, and Germany.

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