Bumble wants you to swipe for friendship. Yes, that's right. It's not even a new thing - BFF was a feature that did exactly that in the main Bumble app since 2016.
My question is, do people really need a swiping app to make friends?
Now that it's a standalone app we can see how much demand there is for friendly swiping.
Bumble with Friends soft-launched back in March and became official in late July.
Since its official launch, Bumble for Friends was downloaded 97K times, according to our estimates. More downloads came from Google Play than the App Store, but overall the two are fairly similar.
The app is only available in a small number of (mostly) English-speaking countries at the moment, but the US is by far the largest country by downloads.
But, is it making any money?
According to our estimates, Bumble for Friends earned a total of $56K in net revenue so far. Net means what Bumble gets to keep after Apple and Google take their share.
Like downloads, the US is responsible for most of the revenue. But unlike downloads, most of the revenue, 79%, came from the App Store.
At the same time, Bumble's flagship app was downloaded 1.2M times and earned $21M of net revenue.
Two weeks isn't enough to gauge traction, so I'll revisit it in a few months.
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.