Love Lives - #8 Bumble share their top tips for dating app success and critique our bios

Episode Date: November 10, 2017

This week on Millennial Love we're joined by International Brand Director at Bumble, Louise Troen, for an episode all about the feminist dating app. Why are there better looking men on Bumble? How do you craft the perfect opening line? And how would Louise rate our Bumble bios? We discuss all this and more, and are set a dating challenge for next week.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/millenniallove. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hello and welcome to Millennial Love, the Independent Lifestyle Desk's weekly podcast on sex, dating and relationships. Hosted by me, Rachel Hosey, acting assistant lifestyle editor. And me, Olivia Petter, lifestyle writer. Each week we'll be discussing the core dating issues affecting millennials today. There are endless podcasts out there on love and relationships, but we felt that nobody was really speaking to our generation, where people ghost, zombie and breadcrumb one another quicker than you can say Tinder. As two longtime singletons, Olivia and I are hoping to break down the boundaries of modern day dating one aubergine emoji at a time. So what does all this mean and

how is it affecting the way we form relationships today? This week on the podcast, we are joined with Louise Troen, who is International Brand Director at Bumble. And we are super excited to have Louise here because Olivia and I are, what should we say, avid Bumble users? Yeah. Bumblers? Avid Bumblers. Bumblebees, if you will. What does one call a Bumble user? A Bumbler.

A Bumbler. I quite like that. I like that. Okay, so why don't you start by telling us a bit about what International Brand Director at Bumble user. A Bumbler. A Bumbler. I quite like that. I like that. Okay, so why don't you start by telling us a bit about what International Brand Director at Bumble does? Cool. So firstly, thank you both so much for having me. Honoured to be here. Super excited also that you picked us to talk to today, mainly because we recently launched a new vertical of Bumble outside of dating that I think will also be really interesting to your listeners as well. International brand director. So my job kind of spans every discipline that you can imagine from a brand point of view across marketing, communications, ensuring that the brand is relevant and appropriately spoken of and utilized and communicated across most of the world.

The only market I don't oversee is the US. We have a separate team over there in Austin where we were born. But outside of the US, we exist in 150 countries. Wow, that's low. Yeah, it's actually a lot more than people realize. But marketing-wise, we've only shown up invested um and sort of communicated our presence in france germany the uk uh spain as of next week and australia um but obviously if you go to dubai and go on to bumble it all still follows the same protocol you

can still find people um but from a volume point of view we haven't yet yet shown up in those countries but we will um the aim is to kind of tackle and target the whole world one bee at a time. So where do you have the most users? So the US is our predominant market, which I guess is kind of obvious considering that our CEO and founder is American and the majority of our team are in Austin. And then quickly following that is the UK, which is obviously really exciting for us. And we're growing rapidly, almost at a rate that we can't keep up with. And considering we are only two and a half, nearly three years old. Yeah, it's quite ridiculous for a lot of us who have been with the brand since the beginning.

We were told when we first started at Bumble, you know, this is so silly that you're letting women make the first move. It's never going to happen. We live in a predominantly misogynist society across friendship, relationships, working world. It's a really nice thought and very sweet and romantic, but it's never going to happen. And recently we worked out that we've had over 10 million women make the first move, which is kind of incredible. I love that. It's probably worth explaining for anyone who doesn't know about Bumble. Maybe you are married or something. I don't know. Married or something. Why wouldn't you be on Bumble otherwise? I don't know. The unique point about Bumble is that only women can make the first move um and i have actually found that it's now kind of the only

dating app i do use which is for various reasons which we'll discuss um later but i do think it's interesting that you say it's growing so much because um in london i feel like bumble is amongst my friends anyway the the dating app that people use most however friends outside of London say I have a friend who lives in Winchester and she's like I go on Bumble every night but I complete it every night completing Bumble just sounds so depressing it's like you complete Mario Kart or something I know but I did it one time did you I was very confused I don't know how I did it it was like you've run out of people and I was like

what I think that's why there were more that's definitely why we try and encourage people when they're setting their um distance setting so obviously on the app you can choose whether you are looking for men women what age preference you have and also how close or how far you want to set your distance settings and we try and encourage everyone to set them as wide as possible because naturally if you're in a tiny village in the middle of Cornwall the likelihood that you're going to find more than 20 people isn't going to be huge and also the idea for us is that we're all so sort of on the run and on the go and moving from city to city and visiting our parents in a different city all the time that the notion of

having a 10 mile radius isn't that effective when it comes to matches so one of the points we always say is try and increase your distance because the person that you match with in Scotland might just be visiting a friend and be back in London, you know, the next day. Okay, this actually brings me on to something I wanted to ask you and I was going to save this question till later, but it's linked to what you're just saying. Okay, I'm going to give you a hypothetical situation.

Say I am, I don't know, home at my parents and I'm swiping on bumble and I increase my radius because my parents live in the middle of nowhere and there's no one around yeah say a guy comes up that I really like the look of and I don't know let's call him Bob so I swipe right on Bob and I'm like yeah really liking the look of Bob really liking everything about his profile praying for a match with Bob and then so that's like Sunday afternoon or something. Sunday evening, I go back to London. Yeah. And I have not matched with Bob.

Obviously, he could have just swiped left on me. But is it the fact that I will not come up on his profile again until I am within his radius? Correct. Oh, that's so sad. Really? It is sad. But I think the idea is that we're trying to encourage more immediate connections, you know, with a lot of the other apps that are out there.

It's very easy to match with someone and then kind of not make a move or match with someone hundreds of miles away and kind of be happy and sort of chuffed and your ego's been a bit stroked that somebody likes you and then nothing really happens from that. that somebody likes you, and then nothing really happens from that. We find that by making sure that people are within each other's radiuses, the likelihood of actually meeting up and it becoming a meaningful connection increases. Also, that's why we have the 24-hour period to make the first move because we do not want people on the app that, and a lot of people do do this, you know, they match with someone, they get a boom, you have a connection, and that does something to you. It generates sort of an effect that makes you feel liked and loved,

and everyone likes that. It's like someone looking at you in a bar and smiling. But the idea of Bumble is that we want to take it one step further, and it's not really about just being flattered. It's about forming a meaningful connection or encouraging the likelihood of one of those connections. Yeah, I think that is like sometimes slightly stressful the 24-hour thing I sometimes I just have like a really busy 24 hours and I go

on the app and I'm like no yeah same well sometimes yeah sometimes I just forget if I match with someone I'm like okay great but you don't want to send them a message instantly within like the first few seconds otherwise I just forget I think you you'd also be surprised and we do a lot of sort of consumer feedback of our users. You'd be surprised at the amount of guys that actually

really want that to happen. Really? I was with a friend of mine last night and we were going through Bumble together and he was kind of showing me the girls

that he'd matched with and he was like it's so refreshing that I can wait and have a message from a girl that says hey I have a work event tomorrow but I could meet for a drink at nine he was saying to me like it shouldn't always

and we really believe this it shouldn't always be down to the guy and the idea of letting and enabling the woman to make the first move not only means she can lead the tone of the conversation but it also filters out those guys that don't respect the notion of gender equality which essentially is what feminism is yeah I think it's really interesting because actually for a long time I resisted getting bumble I was on tinder and I resisted getting bumble because I thought it would be full of really lame guys who are too chicken to talk to a woman and I was like nah they sound lame but then I actually got it and I did realize actually it's guys who just have a bit more respect for women yeah and

as I was saying before all of my friends we always say that the people on bumble are just better looking and nicer people I always say a higher caliber yeah it is a higher caliber of people which is odd because there's no vet it's not like some of these other dating apps where there's a vetting process in terms of who's allowed to use it or not of course you get some sleazeballs still yeah like but way less than you do on the other apps i find do you think that um for guys it's you're saying it's refreshing for them but it's also annoying if sometimes they like really want to start the conversation just can't i don't think bumble is what you would join if you were that kind of guy i think from the outset we're very open and very clear about what we represent and what we kind of expect from our users. This is an environment that is and has been born out of a desire to make women feel more comfortable in the dating space. It's a historical

fact that it is usually more likely and more often than not, men that are addressing or starting conversations with women with unsolicited words or ugly things or expecting sort of them to have a hookup that evening. And it's women that generally feel affected by that. So the reason Bumble was built is to go, okay, we support women. Yes, we obviously love men as well. But this whole mechanic of women making the first move is supposed to filter out the guys out there that don't believe in that progressive thought. And automatically, and this goes back to your point about the quality of user, when you create a product that from a mechanic point of view stands up for that, not just a brand marketing philosophy, it filters out all of these

guys that genuinely can't be bothered to do that. And that's fine. You know, those guys will always exist and there are lots of apps out there for that kind of person. But for us as a brand, we stand very true and very kind of proud of that. And that will never change. That will always be fundamental in our product. So this new aspect of Bumble, Bumble Biz. Yeah. Can you tell us a bit more about that,

what it is and why you decided to launch it? Yeah. So I guess for anyone that doesn't know where we started, we were launched in 2014. We were born out of a desire from our CEO and founder, Whitney, to create a dating environment online that was safe and kind. And she used to work at Tinder, didn't she? She is the co-founder of Tinder. Right.

And she left Tinder to embark on the project of Bumble. And her main philosophy was, I want to create an environment that not only lets women lead, but also is rooted in kindness. I think nowadays people talk about being kind and being nice and supporting women and that's all very well to say that, but you actually have to make definitive product changes to encourage that behavior.

And that's where the whole women make the first move only mechanic came from. We started in dating and I think alongside that and our brand marketing which was all about being playful and being fun and you know dating should be a really exciting time for women and men. It shouldn't be a time where you feel alone or desperate or isolated and I think dating apps really did that for dating in general. It sort of gamified and brought back the fun of connecting with someone, chatting to them, building up a rapport and then going on a date with them. It became a roaring success within the first year.

We also very fortunately launched at a time when, you know, this whole wave of feminism was really becoming topical from an economical, political, social standpoint. We started to build this community of women that really bought into what we stood for and our user and consumer really asked for another vertical in friendship. So then we launched Bumble Friend Finder, which was about connecting women only. And the idea was that anyone could obviously start the conversation because it was aimed at women.

And it was really for our users that asked for that to be born. Can I interject as well? What happens if you're gay on Bumble? Who makes the first move? So in homosexual relationships and in homosexual matches, either of you can make the first move. So it's just for heterosexual couples. But we are super kind of inclusive of every type of individual

and their needs and the main thing is that we're focused on women in heterosexual relationships because that is generally where the problem lies um but yeah after bumble bff what we noticed was a lot of the women on bff were using it to connect in the professional world so in their biographies they'd write hi i'm louise um i work for Bumble, we're looking for a graphic designer for a new project. So it was really out of us sort of watching what our users were doing.

And also, you know, like any brand and tech brand out there, you always have to innovate and evolve. And it just seemed like the natural next step, especially as the majority of unsolicited inequality comes from the professional space as well. So obviously Bumble BFF is for women only. Yes. So Bumble Biz, is that also women only or is that men and women?

So that's for men and women, but it still follows the notion that women make the first move. Oh, okay. So if I connect with Steve, I have to initiate that conversation with him. And the idea of Biz wasn't necessarily to recruit people or it's not supposed to be a recruitment tool it's a networking app so if you guys here at the independent have a profile for yourself you would say we're looking for people who are

really passionate about sex and relationships to come and talk on a podcast and I could match with you if I also felt that that was something that my brand wanted to be involved with. That's interesting. But what if you're on biz and you see someone that you fancy? Can you like refer them to the app? Because obviously like Dix, Bumble is fundamentally known as a dating app. So do you think it can, with Bumble Biz,

do you think it sort of blurs the boundaries a bit between dating and business do you think that could be a harmful kind of conflation? I think it's a great question and it's something that you know we're often asked about I actually think because we have Bumble dating the idea is pretty strange to be like I'm on biz but I fancy this girl because you would just scoot over to Bumble to kind of indulge in that kind of behavior. We are very strict about conversations and behavior on biz. In actual fact, we will and we would, you know, ban people immediately if they used biz as a network or a platform to connect from a dating perspective.

That's just something as a brand that we really have to protect. from a dating perspective that's just something as a brand that we really have to protect and you know if your bio says hi I'm Jo and I'm looking to get lucky you would be banned from every platform if you if you don't behave properly on on Bumble business we have to stand by that because otherwise those you're right those lines would become too blurred and you know we'd lose kind of what we're standing for that makes sense yeah no it does make sense I was only asking because I know that myself included and friends of mine have been contacted on LinkedIn by by guys asking them to get on dates but this is exactly why we decided to launch biz as well because people would separate I've had it before where people are like and Whitney always

says this you know professionally speaking you've got great eyes that's just not professional or I had a guy the other day contact me on one of those and said um thanks so much for connecting looking forward to getting looking forward to getting to know you and then that like weird side eye emoji that definitely means yeah oh we were trying to do that the other day well I can't do it now because it's a podcast and that would be pointless but I thought I was doing it but I wasn't really doing it but it's funny you'd be surprised also how normal it's become you know I even saw that message and I'm like oh what an idiot I'm going to delete it it's not okay and actually as women we don't have to endure that kind of interaction and Bumble Biz is supposed to be there to try and help

not only evolve business but also help women to understand that they don't have to be subjected to that kind of behavior it's an interesting one i don't know anyone who's on it yet but i think i think i want to check it out yeah i think it'd be particularly useful for freelancers yeah true true true we found it's been quite helpful yeah for freelancers and creatives who I think the immediacy of it is really interesting and also the fact that it's still geo-targeted so you know LinkedIn is great as a recruitment tool but you can't set your distance to five miles away because you immediately need a photographer to help you with the last minute shoot there's nothing out there that actually offers that immediate sort of resource and that's what we hope it will be

right so let's go back to the dating side help us teach us your ways are you on Bumble? I am you are and I'm desperately single actually

very meta welcome thanks welcome I've been there for six months I've seen a guy on Bumble before who's like

I work at Bumble and I'm like, hello. What's his name? Is his name John? I don't know. John or Julian. Yeah,

they're both brilliant and very, very cool people. I would be nice to them if I were you. I may have like, forgotten to start the convo. Sorry.

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Okay, what do you tend to go for, Libby? Mine aren't very good. It kind of depends what the guy has said in their bio. Sure. Try and pick up on something that they've said in their bio on something ideally but sometimes there's nothing you can go off ideally you want something in their bio or in their pictures that you can pick up on yeah but if you ask them about you have to come up with something out of the blue yeah but i'm not very good at that i to be honest i am that person that will match with someone and and forget about it or just but you must get and not message

but don't do that because then it disappears. I know, and then I regret it. It could be really good for you. But you must sometimes start the conversation. Yeah, well, when I do, it's typically, oh, you live in New York, or you said you spent some time in this cool place. What were you doing there? That kind of thing.

So it's always based on, you don't have any go-to openers? I don't have any cheesy pick-up line openers, but your face tells me that you do cheesy well sometimes they are cheese related I've got like a few that I recycle nice I like to go for you know food related things because I like food and so some of my things are like what three food items do you always have in your kitchen you learn a lot from that you learn a lot that's a good one that's really creative do you always have in your kitchen? You learn a lot from that. You learn a lot.

That's a good one. That's really creative. Do you know what? I get interesting responses. Some are like, ooh, great question. Some are like, that's a weird question. And then if they say that, I'm like, yes, well, I'm a bit weird. And clearly.

But I think if someone says that's a weird question, then you understand automatically that they don't follow the same sense of humor. Exactly. Quite a good vetting system. And, you know, it does mean you get some guys that very occasionally you get some that respond with very lewd things

but usually it's very interesting as well because we will get to our own bios but in mine I mention a love of peanut butter so it's very interesting

who picks up on it exactly and so a lot of them mention peanut butter in response to that and I don't know actually if I like that or not if it's true

fine and I'm like well done you noticed but if they've just said it because it's in my bio I'm like nah mate you can do better than that quite a lot of people I think like peanut butter I think well it's delicious but I don't know if they're on my level um and so then I do that sometimes I do like what's your go-to brunch dish just kind of like opening the conversation about brunch because I need they need to love brunch to be honest sometimes I will like if it's like a Sunday night it's not kind of that interesting but I'll be like what was the most fun thing you did this weekend and like I

have I want them to have done something fun yeah you know that's a bit like I didn't do anything like I slept for two days yeah I'm like you're boring. But actually, even just last night, after our conversation yesterday about emojis, I went for, what is your most used emoji? Did you? Yeah. What did they say? I think I've only had a couple of replies and I haven't even looked at them properly yet, but I will.

One of them definitely did the crying with laughter emoji, to which I will respond, well, actually, that's the most used emoji of all in the US. What is it? You're a pro. Well, you know, I know some stats. I know some facts. So yeah, what do you think makes a good line?

I don't think there's, this is going to sound like a really boring response. I don't think there's like one set rule to go always open lines with cheese jokes or always ask a question about their weekend. I think you're right. It should be tailored. And I think the more personal they are, the better.

Me personally, I'm the same as you. I'll pick up something from their picture, like if they're deep sea diving in something. Yeah, where did they do that? And I think you actually can find something. I mean, if they do their kind of profile properly, there are five pictures. And there will be one of them that has something outside of just their face in it.

So even if it's a shirt they're wearing or a sport that they're playing, I think if you can pick up on something like that, that's probably the most effective in terms of getting a response. A sense of humor goes a long way. We've just introduced the ability to send a GIF as well. I tend to always send a GIF as my initial opening.

That's interesting because I've had mixed reviews on that. Some guys are like, don't just open with a gif, like be more creative. That was my man voice again, Richard. But I feel like I enjoy a gif. Do you know what? I don't think there's like a yes or a no answer to this. I think if I put a gif out because I really love gifs

and I really love the minions, so my gif is this minion that that's dressed up as this sassy woman and she's waving hello. That's always my, well, not always, most of the time my opener. And the guys that respond are like, oh my God, I love the Minions as well. And it triggers a reaction from someone on the same level as you. If you ask a cheese joke and someone comes out with another cheese joke,

there is a vibe there that you should entertain. There are so many good cheese jokes. You can have a whole conversation of cheese jokes. I would enjoy that. But I would say, you know, don't be creative. You know, there's a lot of things that you could say in terms of how are you, what do you think of the weather? This stuff, it's just not going to work.

I think the more creative you are and also the more you can show your personality in your opening line. You know, say I ate five cheese sandwiches today. I just missed sandwich roundup. Exactly. If you can also kind of drop in elements about yourself, then I think it's more likely to trigger a reaction. Yeah.

But also if you don't get a reaction from your opening line, don't worry about it. You know, you've already made the first move, which is quite, you know, important in itself. They're gutting when they don't reply though. Although you say that, but a lot of my friends have gone up to guys in a bar or smiled at a guy in a bar

and that hasn't triggered a reaction. True. And we're not saying every time you make the first move you're going to get, that would be brilliant if we could orchestrate it to be that way, but you're not always necessarily going to get a response. But if you kind of hit a chord or a note with someone that kind of triggers a thought in their head or they feel that there's some chemistry from a conversation

point of view then just like in real life that's like more likely to kind of go somewhere I think as well you have to think about what you'd like to receive like if like on a dating app a guy messaged me and went hi how are you I'd be like what snooze yeah same seriously I would never find if a guy came up to you in a bar and said hi how are you you'd be like oh I'm great and then you'd be waiting for the next thing if they came up and said I've already bought you a drink I saw you were drinking

Sauvignon Blanc earlier it's over there by the bar and walked away suddenly it triggers a reaction that would be great all men out there do that why has it never happened to us? No, never. But do you know what I mean? It's the more creative you are

and the more personal you are, the more interesting it becomes. And also this should be fun. You know, this isn't about sitting at home and if you don't get a response being upset, it's about going, okay, great, you know, let's go on to something else. That guy clearly wasn't interested or worth my time.

Plenty more bumblebees in the sky. Exactly. Nice. Thanks. Nice, I like that. Did you plan that? No, it just came to me. It works with bumblebees in the sky. Exactly. Nice. Thanks. Nice. I like that. Did you plan that? No. It just came to me.

It works with words for a living. Do you want a job? They're going to take that now. To the trade market. All right. So next step in our bumble lesson. Yeah. We are going to ask Louise to critique our bumble bios.

Yeah. I'm nervous about this. I'll describe what mine is. You might disagree with my description, but you can do it yourself. So I have like five pictures. The first one is just kind of like a headshot of me, which is a picture I have on everything like my Twitter, my Instagram and my Facebook.

Is that the one that's a professional photograph? Yeah. Okay. Your hair looks shiny. Thank you. Then there's one of me diving underwater with like flippers on. Then there's one of me diving underwater. It like flippers on. Then there's one of me at my birthday party in a sparkly dress and a tiara. And there's a 25 in the background. And I'm holding like.

Can I see these as well? Yeah. I'm holding like a giant thing of Prosecco. There's the diving one. The diving one. Nice. Then it's me skiing because I'm very active, don't you know? Then it's me about in like a, what do you call that outfit?

A race car driving outfit? I mean do you call that outfit a race car driving outfit but it's not a race car I'm actually about to do an aerobatic flight god you make yourself I mean you are an interesting person

you make yourself seem like this really worldly cultured person like hey I ski I dive just to hear what

my final one is this is me rock climbing oh my god you're such an activities girl yeah you really are well that's the image anyway and then the bio goes it says Rachel 25 journalist University of Bristol This is me rock climbing. Oh my God. You're such an activities girl. Yeah, you really are. Well, that's the image anyway.

And then the bio goes, it says, Rachel, 25, journalist, University of Bristol, location London, peanut butter aficionado, speaker of French and German, optimist, coriander of earth, five foot nine, three emojis, clinking champagne flutes, avocado, weightlifting woman. Tell me. I actually, I mean, we haven't gone through sort of how successful Bumble is for you but I really rate your profile in actual fact this is one of the best ones I've probably seen in a in a while oh my god I'll tell you I'll tell you why though it's brilliant okay

so firstly your opening picture it's clear I can see what you look like where people go wrong is that there's either two or three of them in the picture do not do that people are looking for immediate kind of reaction here. And if they can't see which one you are, they'll just scoot past you. See, I don't have any group photos though. And I wonder if that is good. I feel like people might think she has no friends.

No, because people assume that you have friends, surely. Yeah, I didn't like fake a birthday party for that picture. I don't think having no pictures of friends will affect your likelihood of a match. I think when you start having a conversation and you meet in person, then you can be like, yeah, I've got mates. Yeah. Or I don't have mates, which is also fine. It's true.

Your picture's really clear. You're smiling. We get a lot of good feedback from people that are smiley in their profile picture. Don't wear a costume. Make sure I can see who you are, smile. Your second picture of you diving shows you're active, shows one of your hobbies, that's also really important. Don't just have five pictures of your face,

I've already seen that in the first picture. This is supposed to be almost like your personal resume. So just so you would put on your professional CV, you'd say, this is my experience, this is what my skills are, it should be the same on here. I like diving, this is the food I say, this is my experience. This is what my skills are. It should be the same on here. I like diving. This is the food I like.

This is where I like to hang out. This is what languages I speak. And I think this profile actually kind of catches and captures exactly kind of, I don't know you that well yet, but seems to capture. I mean, I would like to be your friend. Hi. I think the skiing one is great. It shows that, yeah yeah you like the outdoors and I'm guessing these are all the things that you would look for in a partner

as well in terms of your bio I think you could put a bit more in here we have there's quite a big space for you to highlight exactly what you're looking for and I think you've written a lot about yourself do you think you should put what you're after?

I don't think you necessarily want to say I'm looking for this look, this type, this height but I think it would be nice. Do you think you should put what you're after? I don't think you necessarily want to say, I'm looking for this look, this type, this height. But I think you need to say, looking for someone to be active with, looking for someone to drink red wine with and play Scrabble. You know, these are the kinds of things that guys actually respond to. Or if you're not looking for that,

looking for a guy to have fun with in London, just moved here for two months, looking to see the city. These are things that people react to because as much as we try and say, I don't know what I'm looking for, deep down when you see it, you do know what you're looking for. So for you, I would say that's the only thing that I would mention. I like the way that you said you're an optimist. You seem like a really positive person. Thanks. I would date you. Oh, Christ, you're not going to want to date me. Okay, I'm feeling pretty great. I'm going to update my bio tonight.

Okay. All right. But what you should do is after this podcast next week, update it and come back and say, I was about to say, let's review next week and see how we've done. So I'll tell you what, if you match with someone, we'll pay for a really fun first date for you. Oh, my God.

That is a good idea. But you have to organise it as the woman. Yeah, ofs. Actually, I say ofs, but often the guy does organise the first date because often they're the ones that actually do the asking out. Yeah. Okay. You're right though. Okay. Challenge accepted. Great. Okay, so

my dating app is a bit of a sorry site. My dating profile. So it's, my profile picture is me with a helmet on smiling when I went to drive McLaren race cars for the day. It's a selfie, quite close up. Probably the only selfie I've ever taken, actually. So cool.

Two cool selfies. The second one, you said no costume, so I feel like this is bad. This is me dressed up as a millennial pink Mad Hatter for a fancy dress party. It's a great outfit. No, I like that costume. I can still see your face and what you look like.

I think that's the main thing here. You've got a great figure as well. Thanks. I'm wearing a pink tutu and a sparkly bodysuit and a Mad Hatter hat. And shoes with eyelashes on them. For sure. And then the third picture is me in a very bizarre inflatable chair at Glastonbury. You can't actually really see me.

You can sort of just see a lot of tents. But I really like festivals, so I thought that was a good one to include. And that's it. I only have three and then it just says, Livvy, 23, the Independent University of Bristol, location London, and then in my bio, all I've written is, be nice, I'll probably write about

you. Which is very true. Also, I just want to caveat that we do both happen to have been to the University of Bristol, but that is not something you have to do to work here. Just going to put that out there. All backgrounds are accepted. Okay, so I love the first picture. I think you look fun.

You look personable and you're smiling, like I mentioned, really important in your first picture. I think it's cool that you're wearing a helmet. I think it shows that you're active, adventurous. I don't have... A bit different. It is different. Not many people's cool that you're wearing a helmet. I think it shows that you're active, adventurous. I don't have... A bit different. It is different. Not many people run around with a helmet on. No.

I like the Mad Hatter one. I can see all of you, which I think sometimes is important. You know, it's not... We're not necessarily saying that your height or your figure or any of that stuff is paramount, but it's still part of the notion of attractiveness. Agreed.

And I think some people do have certain preferences to certain heights or hair colour. And although we don't say you should be and we don't have preferences to set this, I think it's important that you do show a bit more of yourself than just your face. Agreed, yeah. If there's a guy like ever I, in all his pictures,

just his head, not the rest of his body, you'd be a bit like, but why? Yeah, I always look for that in guys' profiles. Yeah. But it's funny because for me, I'm not really that bothered about height or body, but I was still like, just to make sure that you have a body. Yeah. Not just a floating head.

I love the Glastonbury one. I think that's really important. When I've matched with people, I've got a picture of me at a festival at one of them. And I think that says something about you as a person yeah um so just like you were saying with yours in terms of you diving I do think it's important to show what you do in your spare time um I dive every week yeah every day where did you go diving I mean that was off Bali so okay no you know you only have three pictures yeah I know and actually cardinal sin it's just that you're not taking advantage of you know you I'm sure you have more than two hobbies of going to festival

and dancing in a tutu and I think you know whether it's a book that you're reading that you really like or a food that you like to cook you know use use the fact that we're offering you a couple more options to kind of speak speak more about your personality the only thing about your bio it's pretty limited um like i said before you can also identify what you're looking for or what you're not looking for um i think also it could initially possibly scare people off from saying be nice i'm gonna write about you because if a guy on here is just looking to have some fun and works at, you know, a property company, he might not want to get involved for the sake of his, his own professional kind of stature. So I would, you know, I would explain to them when you start talking to them, I work for this, this is what I do, I would love to write about you. But I would always say in your

bio, you know, I'm a journalist, this is what I do, I write about sex relationships, and all this kind of stuff, because all that is really interesting. But I would probably say not to say I'm going to write about you because as an initial statement that could could scare a few a few people off. That makes sense. But I like the way you said be nice because everyone should be nice. Yeah, definitely. So make those changes and also come back and we'll see. Let's see how it goes. We'll see how this goes. All right. So just to end on, we are starting a new feature where we are going to do Bumble Bio of the Week. Because we read out a Bumble Bio that I particularly liked last week and people liked it too. So this week it comes from a man named Tom.

And I won't reveal any more about Tom. But his bio says, I like my women how I like my coffee. Strong and given proper recognition for contributions in the workplace and society. Oh my God, Tom. Right? I hope you swiped right on Tom. I did swipe right. I don't know if I matched that.

I need to go and check. Can I see what Tom looks like? Well, I just screenshotted it, so actually no. Sorry, but I'll find him. Well, Tom, if you're out there, get in touch because you're brilliant. Get in touch, Tom. We will all go out with you. And also, as of next week, we want to be reading out your dating disaster stories.

So if you've had any terrible dates, you can either write them in an iTunes review of the podcast or send them to us by email at millennial.love at independent.co.uk. at millennial.love at independent.co.uk. Plus, very exciting news, Louise has offered to, as she's just critiqued and helped us both with our Bumble bios, has offered to do the same for you. So if you would like to have that

and benefit from her expertise, please do get in touch via email, via comment. You can tweet us. And one person will be picked every week to have a bumble bio makeover and alas that's all we've got time for this week thank you so much for coming on louise thank you so much your wisdom has been invaluable keep bumbling oh we will we will and we hope everyone has enjoyed listening. If you have, please do subscribe to the podcast.

Rate us. Review us on iTunes. We really want to hear from you. And we hope you'll tune in again next week. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye. We'll see you next time.