Would you use the same app to find a new job as well as a potential life partner? Bumble, the mobile dating app that has more than 21 million users around the world, today launched a career networking function where people can upload details of their education and experience, as well as using the app to find a date.
The U.S. dating industry alone is said to be worth around $3 billion, and now Bumble is set to take a slice out of the recruiting industry, estimated by Deloitte to be worth $200 billion worldwide.
Bumble was launched in 2014 by Whitney Wolfe, one of the founders of Tinder, in an attempt to make mobile dating more female-friendly: on Bumble, it's only women who can write the first message to a potential date.
"Bumble has facilitated over 350 million women-led first moves and had over 3 billion messages sent. We designed Bumble to be a platform that encourages positive, impactful interactions in love, friendship, and now business," the company said in an online statement Monday.
But people won't have to put their resume on their online dating profile, as the new product, Bumble Bizz, will be a separate experience within the app. It will be available in the U.S., Canada, U.K., France and Germany, and will use the same swiping left and right technique as the dating app.
To use Bumble Bizz, users upload a photo so their identity can be verified, before adding images of their portfolio and writing a professional bio.
Bumble is a high-engagement app: the company claims that users spend an average of 90 minutes a day on it. For comparison, people spend more than 50 minutes a day on Facebook and Instagram combined, according to Facebook's 2016 Q1 earnings.