Bumble’s business networking feature launches today

About a year ago we reported that Bumble would soon launch BumbleBizz – a swipe-based networking tool that is designed to help people make professional connections.

And now the feature is finally rolling out today to users in the US, UK, Germany, France and Canada.

Essentially BumbleBizz will use the same types of parameters that regular Bumble does – your location, network, etc – and curate a group of professionals for you to swipe through. A two-way match will start a conversation, which will ideally lead to professional opportunities like jobs, mentors or just meeting new people who work in your industry. It builds on BumbleBFF, which was the company’s first expansion beyond dating and lets you find new friends.

With BumbleBizz woman still need to make the first move – which the company hopes will lead to the same uptick positive behavior and reduced abuse rates that they’ve seen result from having woman make the first move on their dating platform.

Besides being woman-led, it also will be the first major professional networking platform to be swipe-focused. This will lead to a lot more connections than on a platform like LinkedIn, where the need to request then approve a “connection” is a higher psychological barrier that just swiping right.

It’s also a big deal because for many people this feature means their social life and professional life may now be combined in one app. To assuage these fears Bumble will let you create two different profiles – so your party pics are only seen by dates and your headshots and resume are only seen by professional connections.

The company also shared some new growth stats. The two-year old app boasts 20 million registered users who have sent over three billion messages.