IT Brief New Zealand - Technology news for CIOs & IT decision-makers
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Former Tinder worker to launch rival dating app after suing for sexual harrassment
Wed, 26th Nov 2014
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Former Tinder cofounder Whitney Wolfe has teamed up with two other Tinder colleagues Chris Gulczynski and his parnter Sarah Mick to take on their former employer with a direct competitor called Bumble, set to launch next month.

Wolfe left Tinder earlier this year and sued the company for sexual harassment and workplace discrimination.

According to Bumble’s Facebook page, the app is a social discovery app where users will ‘never get unwanted matches,’ and ‘unlike other apps’, Bumble suggests matches based on more ‘relevant signals’.

There website’s landing page and Facebook page shows photos of the app, which seems to offer more information than what Tinder is currently offering, including job position, company, college, graduation date.

Along with having experience on how to build and launch a dating app, the three former employees will have insider knowledge of how Tinder works, giving them an advantage over their direct competitor.

The publicity behind Wolfe and why she left Tinder is also pushing the start up into the public eye very quickly.

“Stop wasting time finding tons of dead end matches on other apps and switch to Bumble," says the Facebook page.

The app’s name, Bumble, is receiving a mixed response so far in the press, but the company has gone all out on it, buying the "bumble.com" domain, adopted a hive logo and flooding its Facebook page with bumble-bee-based marketing materials and puns.

The app is slated to launch on December 1, according to social media.Neither Bumble nor Tinder are commenting on their coming launch.