Another Snapchat redesign is in the works and will roll out to iOS users shortly – correcting some of the mistakes and addressing the backlash of the most recent update.
Snapchat is one of the most popular social media networks in the world, with many people – especially young users – ditching apps like Facebook in favor of Snaps. However, unlike more established platforms like Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat has yet to find a way to monetize in a meaningful manner.
In order to better appeal to advertisers and maximize profit, a Snapchat redesign was introduced that was wildly unpopular with the majority of users. Around 1.2 million people signed a petition with hopes that the company would revert the service back to its original design, and the company has since acknowledged that the Snapchat redesign “has felt uncomfortable for many”
Due to te massive backlash regarding the Snapchat redesign, the company has yielded and is adjusting features to make it more user-friendly while still trying to retain some of the UI changes that they were aiming for in the first place.
The new Snapchat redesign puts both Snaps and Chats in chronological order again rather than trying to sort things using an algorithm, and moves Stories from your friends back to the right-hand side of the app. Launching the app also launches the camera – allowing you to easily swipe left in order to access the right-hand screen where you can locate your friends’ content.
Your friends’ stories will remain separate from branded content, and a Subscriptions feed will allow you to easily search for Stories from popular creators and publishers in order to use the app to discover new content.
As mentioned above, the original Snapchat redesign was intended to help the service make more money but it seems to have failed spectacularly in that regard. While the app grew its global users, it made less money per user – resulting in very little growth overall.
The update with the Snapchat redesign was announced by Snap CEO Evan Spiegel in the company’s first-quarter earnings call on May 1st. Spiegel spoke on optimizing the design, saying:
“We learned that combining watching Stories and communicating with friends into the same place made it harder to optimize for both competing behaviors. We are currently rolling out an update to address this by sorting communication by recency and moving Stories from friends to the right side of the application, while maintaining the structural changes we have made around separating friends from creators and sorting friends’ Stories by relationships.”
At this point in time, the update is rolling out to the “majority” of iOS users with the rest soon to follow. There’s currently no news on when this new Snapchat redesign will make its way to Android.
Hopefully, this new Snapchat redesign can strike a middle ground between making Snap money and keeping users happy. The original revamp was a bust, but this certainly has the potential to make things right. We’ll have to wait and see how this plays out and whether Snap is able to monetize their increasingly popular social media platform.
