{"id":27515,"date":"2025-05-10T09:15:05","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T09:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=27515"},"modified":"2025-05-10T09:23:13","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T09:23:13","slug":"the-interview-can-whitney-wolfe-herd-make-us-love-dating-apps-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=27515","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Interview\u2019: Can Whitney Wolfe Herd Make Us Love Dating Apps Again?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It feels like a lifetime ago, but when Whitney Wolfe Herd co-founded her first company, the dating app Tinder, the overwhelming feeling about apps and screens and tech in general was optimism. This was 2012, Wolfe Herd was just out of college, and she, too, was optimistic \u2014 about being a woman in tech, about dating apps, about technology\u2019s ability to solve big problems. In the decade-plus since, Wolfe Herd and the culture have learned some lessons.<\/p>\n

Famously, Tinder gamified the search for love, introducing that addictive swipe feature to its target audience: millennials. It was a huge hit, but Wolfe Herd\u2019s time at the company was brief. In 2014, she left Tinder and sued, claiming that she experienced sexual harassment and discrimination from one of her co-founders, with whom she also had a relationship. The company denied responsibility, and the case was settled.<\/p>\n

Soon after that, at 25, she started the dating app Bumble, which billed itself as a safe space for women to find love. (The big innovation on Bumble: Women made the first move.) Wolfe Herd became a darling of the so-called \u201cgirl-boss era\u201d \u2014 making the Time 100, Forbes\u2019s 30 Under 30, all those women in tech lists \u2014 and got very rich in the process, becoming the youngest woman to take a company public and, briefly, a billionaire.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But post-pandemic, with Gen-Z souring on dating apps and wanting IRL connection, Bumble\u2019s shares fell sharply, and last year Wolfe Herd decided to step down as chief executive. It felt like the end of an era and probably was one, except that the departure didn\u2019t last. After a little more than a year away, she is back at the company she founded with a plan to turn its fortunes around: It involves Silicon Valley\u2019s latest transformative technology, A.I., and some perspective on what technology can and can\u2019t do for us. It also involves a broader vision for the app beyond dating: Wolfe Herd told me that she would like Bumble to eventually help users find love by learning to love themselves <\/em>via self-reflective quizzes the company is developing and also to point members to local social gatherings so they can get off the app and into the world. You can decide if all this leaves you feeling optimistic about Bumble, about female leaders in tech, about human connection, or not.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Bumble CEO has returned to run the struggling company she founded, and says she has a plan for getting Gen Z back.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Subscribe: <\/strong>Apple Podcasts<\/a><\/strong> | <\/strong>Spotify<\/a><\/strong> | <\/strong>YouTube<\/a><\/strong> | <\/strong>Amazon<\/a><\/strong> | <\/strong>iHeart<\/a><\/strong> | <\/strong>NYT Audio App<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve been in tech since your early 20s. What was it like to have time away? <\/strong>It was the first time I was faced with \u201cWho am I without one of these huge consumer brands attached to me?\u201d and that\u2019s a very strange place to be. I was 22 when we were starting Tinder, and I became the Tinder girl. Then I became the Tinder lawsuit girl and then I became the Bumble girl. This became an extension of my identity. I am the type of founder-C.E.O. who is in every detail. I\u2019m emailing members who are having bad experiences personally. And so to relinquish that level of involvement took maturity I didn\u2019t know I possessed and a release of control that I didn\u2019t know I was capable of. So it was very destabilizing at first when I stepped away because I was like, Who am I without all of this? And when I left Bumble, it was tough, because it didn\u2019t play out the way I\u2019d hoped in terms of the narrative.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It feels like a lifetime ago, but when Whitney Wolfe Herd co-founded her first company, the dating app Tinder, the overwhelming feeling about apps and screens and tech in general was optimism. This was 2012, Wolfe Herd was just out of college, and she, too, was optimistic \u2014 about being a woman in tech, about dating apps, about technology\u2019s ability to solve big problems. In the decade-plus since, Wolfe Herd and the culture have learned some lessons.Famously, Tinder gamified the search for love, introducing that addictive swipe feature to its target audience: millennials. It was a huge hit, but Wolfe Herd\u2019s time at the company was brief. In 2014, she left Tinder and sued, claiming that she experienced sexual harassment and discrimination from one of her co-founders, with whom she also had a relationship. The company denied responsibility, and the case was settled.Soon after that, at 25, she started the dating app Bumble, which billed itself as a safe space for women to find love. (The big innovation on Bumble: Women made the first move.) Wolfe Herd became a darling of the so-called \u201cgirl-boss era\u201d \u2014 making the Time 100, Forbes\u2019s 30 Under 30, all those women in tech lists \u2014 and got very rich in the process, becoming the youngest woman to take a company public and, briefly, a billionaire.But post-pandemic, with Gen-Z souring on dating apps and wanting IRL connection, Bumble\u2019s shares fell sharply, and last year Wolfe Herd decided to step down as chief executive. It felt like the end of an era and probably was one, except that the departure didn\u2019t last. After a little more than a year away, she is back at the company she founded with a plan to turn its fortunes around: It involves Silicon Valley\u2019s latest transformative technology, A.I., and some perspective on what technology can and can\u2019t do for us. It also involves a broader vision for the app beyond dating: Wolfe Herd told me that she would like Bumble to eventually help users find love by learning to love themselves via self-reflective quizzes the company is developing and also to point members to local social gatherings so they can get off the app and into the world. You can decide if all this leaves you feeling optimistic about Bumble, about female leaders in tech, about human connection, or not.The Bumble CEO has returned to run the struggling company she founded, and says she has a plan for getting Gen Z back.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppYou\u2019ve been in tech since your early 20s. What was it like to have time away? It was the first time I was faced with \u201cWho am I without one of these huge consumer brands attached to me?\u201d and that\u2019s a very strange place to be. I was 22 when we were starting Tinder, and I became the Tinder girl. Then I became the Tinder lawsuit girl and then I became the Bumble girl. This became an extension of my identity. I am the type of founder-C.E.O. who is in every detail. I\u2019m emailing members who are having bad experiences personally. And so to relinquish that level of involvement took maturity I didn\u2019t know I possessed and a release of control that I didn\u2019t know I was capable of. So it was very destabilizing at first when I stepped away because I was like, Who am I without all of this? And when I left Bumble, it was tough, because it didn\u2019t play out the way I\u2019d hoped in terms of the narrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27517,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27515"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27518,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27515\/revisions\/27518"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}