New Bumble features lets you go on 'blind' dates, recommend profiles to friends, and more

Remember blind dates? It happens when someone else, usually a friend, arranges a date for you with another person whom you haven't met for the first time. Well, dating apps can now help you with that.

While we can rely on such apps to help us find a potential partner, sometimes, we want to know first if the person we’re talking to will click with our personality without being biased because of how they look or what their profile says. Bumble has developed new highlights including Speed Dating, a feature where users engage in conversation before seeing each others' profile.

This comes after the women-led dating app discovered that 77 percent of the respondents in the Philippines said they are more focused on emotional maturity than physical requirements.

With this, members can now go on “blind” dates every Thursday from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. and start conversations without seeing any pictures of the person they are paired with. Pairings are based on your location, age, and gender preferences.

Your profile pictures will remain hidden from each other for about three minutes before getting a prompt asking if you would like to continue the conversation. If both of you choose to match, your chats will be in the date mode queue and your profiles will be revealed.

The second new feature is called Compliments. If you want to up your chances with someone, Compliments lets you send a message to a person before connecting.

Bumble says that using this have "statistically increased likelihood of matching and are more likely to have a good chat."

And finally, if you want to act as a matchmaker with your friends, the new Recommend to a Friend lets you do so. How? You can directly share a link to their Bumble profile.

With these new features, you can skip all the back and forth messaging, as you can somehow gauge from the start if you'll hit it off.