What Is the First Message Called on a Dating App?

It is called an opener. You will also see opening line, opening message, first message and icebreaker, and all of them mean the same thing: the first words you send a woman on a dating app. The name does not change from one app to the next. What changes is where that first message lives, and how much she sees before she decides to answer it.

Opener is the word most men use, and it comes from the pickup world, where an opener is whatever you say to start a conversation with a woman you have never spoken to. The online version is the same job on a screen.

Opening line and opening message are the plain-English versions. Bumble's help pages use "opening message" for the one message you get to send before the chat fully opens.

First message is what the apps and most articles call it. Icebreaker is the friendly word for any line meant to make the start of a chat easier, and some men use it for the question they ask in a first message.

If you search for any of these, you will find the same advice under all of them.

On a swipe app like Tinder, you match first and then write. The opener is the first line after the match, and you can send it the same day.

Hinge works differently. You like one specific photo or answer, and you can attach a comment to the like. That comment is your opener, and she reads it before she decides whether to match with you. Some Hinge features let you reach a woman before a match, and the line you attach matters even more there because she has no history with you.

Bumble gives each person one opening message before the chat opens. A Note, which is a short line you can send before you match, counts as that one message. Bumble says so on its help pages.

So the same word covers three different moments. Learn which one your app uses and you know how much weight the first line is carrying.

It has one job: get a reply. It does not need to be clever, charming or long. It needs to be easy to answer.

a dating coach's advice is that the first contact does a great deal to set you apart, and that most men waste it. A good one points at one real thing on her page, whether a photo, a prompt or an interest, and asks something she can answer in a sentence.

"Is the dog in your third photo yours, or did you borrow him for the picture?" works because only a man who looked at the page could have written it. She can answer in four words and be funny doing it.

"Hey" hands her all the work. She has to decide what to say next, and most women with a crowded inbox will not.

"Hi beautiful" and other compliments on looks fail for a different reason. She has read them from other men many times. A line anyone could send to anyone tells her nothing about you.

A long paragraph about yourself reads as pressure from a stranger. Keep it to a line or two.

a dating coach keeps a document of lines that have worked, and he says having a format saves a lot of effort. He also notes that sending the identical copied message over and over can get an account suspended, and eventually banned.

So keep the shape and change the details. The structure can stay the same: a specific observation, then an easy question. Only the observation changes for each woman. That is also what makes it work, because it is specific to her.

On some apps she will send the first message, and then your reply is the part that counts. Answer what she actually wrote, add one small thing about yourself, and ask a light question. Do it the same day while the match is warm.

Send one style of opener to the next ten women and a different style to the ten after that. Count how many answer each time. Change one thing and compare, because three changes at once tell you nothing.

If most of your matches go quiet after the first line, the opener is a good suspect. If you rarely match at all, the problem is earlier, in your photos, and no opener can fix that.

A coach who can read your actual openers next to your actual page can usually say within a few minutes which of the two is costing you answers.