What Happened to Coffee Meets Bagel?

It split in two. Coffee Meets Bagel runs two apps. One is for daters physically located in the United States, Canada and other areas with a +1 country code. The other is for the Worldwide community. The company said it made the split so the app would fit where people live and work faster and smoother. If you cannot find the app you remember, or your matches vanished, the explanation is probably that you installed the wrong one.

The US and Canada app is called "Coffee Meets Bagel: Dating App" and has a green icon. The Worldwide app is called "Coffee Meets Bagel Dating App" and has a purple icon.

The names are nearly identical, which is why men get this wrong. Check the color of the icon and the region the app is built for. If you live in the United States or Canada, you want the green one. Anywhere else, you want the purple one.

Open the store listing, read which region it was built for, and compare the icon with the one on your phone. If the two do not match, you are looking at the other regional app.

CMB said profiles, likes, matches and chats between regional daters carried over automatically to the regional app. That happened when people signed in with their phone number. A man who signed in with the same number did not have to start from nothing.

Facebook sign-in was different. Daters who used Facebook had to link a local phone number in the old app before installing the other one, or their data would not carry over. A man who skipped that step could not count on his old matches coming with him.

CMB no longer supports matches between +1 country code regions and other international regions. Practically, a dater in the United States can chat with someone in Canada but not with someone in Singapore.

That is a real change for a man who traveled or who liked meeting women from other countries. The pool is tied to where you physically are. The upside is that the women you see are close enough to meet, which is the point of a dating app in the first place.

Accounts that stayed on the wrong regional app for their location were eventually locked out, and their data was deleted, according to CMB's update. If you are signing in and getting nowhere, the first thing to check is whether you are using the app that matches your location.

Do that before you contact support or assume your account was banned. A man in Ohio running the Worldwide app, or a man in Singapore running the green one, has an account that cannot work in the way it used to.

A regional split changes who you can match with. Women in another region are out of reach, so everyone you see is someone in your own part of the world. In a large city that can still mean plenty of people. In a small place it can mean a quieter batch, and no international match to fall back on.

a dating coach makes this point about every dating app: how well an app works depends on your region as much as on you. Some apps are strong in one country and weak in another, and he tells men to test more than one and keep the one that produces dates. Run this app for a week and count how many women the daily batch gives you who are honestly worth meeting.

That depends on your numbers, and not on its history. The app is a slower dating app built around a daily batch, and it suits a man who likes picking a few women carefully more than swiping through hundreds.

Give it two weeks in the correct regional app. Count the women who liked you back, the matches who replied, and the replies that turned into a plan for a drink. If those are weak, fix your photos and your first message before you give up on the app. If they are fine and the local pool is quiet, run it beside another app and put your evenings where the numbers are better.