Entering the friend zone in Bumble is easy. You go to your settings, select BFF, and, like the dating portion of the app, can specify the preferred distance and age range of your matches. So, if you only want to be friends with someone older than 26 who is less than six miles away from you, you're in luck. Just know that the more limited your age and location ranges are, the quicker you'll run out of nearby friends to swipe through. Bumble BFF also only allows you to make same-sex friends, so if you're a girl, the "boys have cooties" logic of third grade still fits.I tried to apply the same tactics of a dating profile to my friend profile: a few smiling pictures of me with my dog and one showing an activity I like (in this case, aerial yoga); and a chatty explanation of where I'm from and what I do in the city. Easy enough.The actual swiping felt more bizarre. First off, you don't want to feel like you're dismissing would-be friends based on how they look. That means you're reading every description, which takes more time and can get old fast. It's also easy to tell which people also use the dating side of Bumble: cleavage-bearing photos, duck faces, and lingerie pictures were the norm.But once I got past the initial strangeness, it became kind of fun to match with potential friends and start chatting. Many women had moved to New York with their boyfriends or husbands and were looking for female friends to go to brunch or Spin class with. Others had recently moved to the city and were looking to expand their friend circle beyond their college crowd.I never ran out of people to swipe, and my matches started conversations with me just as often as I did. After a day or two of messaging Lena*, I suggested we grab coffee or drinks after work. We switched to text and confirmed our plans for the following Monday.The actual meetup felt oddly like a blind date. Despite the fact that we had some similar interests, the conversation stalled a few times and after an hour, we seemed to have exhausted all possible avenues. We both said our polite goodbyes and she suggested we hang out again, but there hasn't been any texting in the four days since. Maybe Lena wouldn't be my BFF. Then again, making friends takes weeks and months, not one, post-work chill, so who knows?Plus, if you're feeling adventurous, it might even be worth taking a leap of faith and inviting a good match to take a weekend trip.