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Bumble now lets people match with anyone in their country

Bumble now lets people match with anyone in their country

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And it’s launching audio notes

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Bumble is launching two new features today to make it easier for people to date while social distancing. The company announced that people can now expand their distance filters to match with anyone in their country. The app previously only allowed people to connect with someone within a 100-mile range. To change this, look for “nationwide” in your app settings.

It’s also giving people the option to send audio notes to each other, in addition to video and voice calls as well as text chats. Daters can add a “virtual dating” badge to their profile, too, to indicate that they’re willing to date over video calls. To encourage people to do this, Bumble says it’ll donate $1 to the WHO COVID-19 Solidarity Fund every time someone adds the “Virtual Dating” badge to their profile, up to $10,000.

Multiple dating apps have been updated since people started social distancing because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tinder gave everyone access to its Passport feature for free, which lets them swipe on people around the world, and Hinge built a button that tells daters when their match is ready to have a video date. Bumble was already slightly ahead of the others in developing tools for remote dating because it has built-in video and voice calling. Most other apps require daters to leave the app in order to actually chat. Still, Bumble expanding the distance range at least gives people more possible match options. Even if they live far away from each other, it doesn’t change the actual virtual dating experience.

Correction 4/14, 1:57 PM ET: This story initially stated Bumble would donate up to $100,000 to the WHO COVID-19 Solidarity Fund; that number is actually $10,000. We regret the error.