Bumble has announced its first acquisition earlier this week.
Fruitz, the company Bumble will be acquiring, is a dating app based in France. If you aren't familiar with Fruitz, it's a dating app that's popular with the younger crowd and comes with a twist -- you can communicate your intentions with fruit emoji.
The idea is that you don't have to spell out what you want but rather use one of four fruits to indicate it. I'd say people are getting lazy, but I think that ship sailed a long time ago.
Do people actually like this concept? Let's have a look at downloads.
Since its release in early 2017, Fruitz was downloaded more than 5.2 million times across the App Store and Google Play according to our estimates.
It's most popular in its home country of France, but has users in the hundreds of thousands in Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
Match has been quietly consolidating over the last few years, so for Bumble to make moves, it has to go beyond the popular.
The real question is what it'll do with Badoo, the other dating app it owns through a reverse acquisition. It's unlikely that it'd sell it because there isn't a buyer that isn't a competitor. And if it needs to keep it, how will that help (or hurt) its European expansion?
Question - Should I do a more in-depth report on just dating apps? Would you read it if I do?
December saw a curious split: downloads dropped 2% while revenue sat at $1.3B. ChatGPT and TikTok dominated both charts as the mobile industry enters a new maturity phase.
Wall Street bet $2 billion on Polymarket, and downloads surged 1,172% in December. The prediction market banned in 2022 is now where Wall Street looks for signals.