Bump

Tap two phones together to swap contacts: 125 million downloads, a Google acquisition, and a shutdown three months later

Shut down
19902026

Bump was a mobile app from Bump Technologies that let two people share contact details, photos and files by physically bumping their phones together, matched in the cloud by time and location. Released for iPhone on 27 March 2009 and later Android, it passed 125 million downloads and spawned Bump Pay and the Flock photo app. Google acquired the company in September 2013 and shut the apps down on 31 January 2014; the team went on to create Google Photos.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2009
  2. 27 March 2009 Launch
    Bump for iPhone

    Knock two phones together to swap contacts.

  3. 23 April 2009 Peak
    The App Store's billionth download

    Apple's milestone download is a copy of Bump.

  4. 2012
  5. 29 March 2012 Feature
    Bump Pay

    Money between PayPal accounts with a tap.

  6. 26 July 2012 Feature
    Flock photo app

    Photos from friends at the same event.

  7. 2013
  8. 16 September 2013 Acquisition
    Google acquires Bump Technologies
  9. 31 December 2013 Shutdown announced
    Bump and Flock to close 31 January

    Data export offered.

  10. 2014
  11. 31 January 2014 Shutdown
    Apps shut down

The site through time

Browse bu.mp as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Bump Technologies 2009–2013 Founded Founded by David Lieb, Jake Mintz and Andy Huibers; Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz backed
Google 2013–2014 Acquisition Reported $30 to $60 million; the team went on to build Google Photos

Key figures [edit]

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
Downloads ▲ 125 million 14 February 2013 Reported Downloads across iPhone and Android as stated by Bump in 2013

Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Google bought Bump Technologies in September 2013, reportedly for $30 to $60 million, and on 31 December 2013 the company announced that Bump and its photo app Flock would be removed from the app stores and shut down on 31 January 2014 so the team could work on Google projects. Users were told to export their data. The Bump team went on to build Google Photos.

Our analysis: Bump was a trick that felt like magic in 2009, when sharing a phone number between an iPhone and an Android took typing: bump two phones and the servers matched the two accelerometer jolts and swapped the data. It was one of the most downloaded apps of the App Store's first years and it never became a business, because the trick did not need a company once AirDrop, NFC and messaging apps existed. Google bought the people. What they built next, Google Photos, is the part that lasted.

History [edit]

The bump

Bump came out of the University of Chicago business school, where David Lieb, Jake Mintz and Andy Huibers were tired of typing phone numbers into each other's phones. Their app, released on the iPhone on 27 March 2009, did something simple and clever: when two phones running Bump were knocked together, each sent its accelerometer jolt, timestamp and location to Bump's servers, which paired the two and swapped whatever the users had chosen to share, at first contact cards, later photos, apps and, on Android, anything. It needed no pairing, no cable and no common platform. A month later, on 23 April 2009, Bump was the App Store's billionth download, and Apple used it in adverts.

Sequoia led a $3 million round in October 2009 and Andreessen Horowitz a $16 million one in 2011. Bump added Android, then Bump Pay in March 2012, which moved money between PayPal accounts with a tap, and in May 2012 a way to bump photos from a phone to a computer by tapping the phone on the space bar. Flock, a photo app that gathered pictures taken by friends at the same event, followed in July 2012. By 2013 Bump claimed 125 million downloads and was one of the ten most downloaded free iPhone apps of all time.

Google

None of it made money, and by 2013 sharing had built-in answers: AirDrop, NFC, iMessage, WhatsApp. On 16 September 2013 Google acquired Bump Technologies; the price was reported at $30 to $60 million. On 31 December 2013 the company said Bump and Flock would leave the app stores and stop working on 31 January 2014, with a data export for anyone who wanted their bumped photos. Lieb's team was folded into Google's photo work and, in May 2015, shipped Google Photos, whose "auto awesome" and sharing features owe a good deal to Flock and Bump.

The domain today

bu.mp no longer resolves.

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Sources [edit]

  1. Sequoia Capital invests in Bump Technologies, the iPhone-tapping data swap app TechCrunch 24 October 2009 [archived]
  2. Bump introduces Bump Pay, allows you to pay friends by tapping phones Mashable 29 March 2012 [archived]
  3. With its latest update, Bump's mobile app replaces USB flash drives TechCrunch 14 February 2013 [archived]
  4. Google-acquired Bump shutting down this month The Verge 1 January 2014 [archived]

Last verified: 16 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).