Snapchat is rolling out its another redesign to its app for iOS users. After being hit by significant critics last year for changing some key features which led 1.2 million people to sign a petition to revert the new update. Snapchat realized that previous update has felt uncomfortable to many users.
In the last update, all the stories moved to the chat page and were sorted according to the popularity. Whereas on the right side was taken by celebrity updates only.
The app will now put the snaps and chats back to its original chronological order instead of sorting them according to the popularity. In the latest update, you will get the camera on opening the Snapchat app; chats are moved to the left and snap stories are back on the right side of the app along with celebrity snaps. A new ‘subscription’ feed has been added to the right so that user can easily search through and access the publisher’s and content creator’s snap stories. So the new snapchat is more like old snapchat.
In February, reality TV star Kylie Jenner took this matter to the twitter. She twitted that she likes the new (previous) update of the snapchat and no longer use the picture-sharing application. This mere tweet by Kylie Jenner knocked down $1.3 billion from the stock market value of Snap Inc. Around the same time, a petition started in the UK which grew more than 1.2 million signatures. The request was signed under the title “Remove the new Snapchat update,” calling snapchat to roll back the changes it made in November last year.
“With the release of the new Snapchat update, many users have found that it has not made the app easier to use, but has, in fact, made many features more difficult,” wrote organizer Nic Rumsey. In an unofficial response, the company admitted that new update had felt uncomfortable to many users but refused to promise and roll-back the latest update.
All the changes looked noble on the paper. The app will use algorithms to sort and show the content to the users, and separate celebrity content and subscription from the friends’. Even though it came with good intentions, but at least million users were not amazed. The went to hating that snaps and stories were placed on the same page and sponsored content becomes more prominent.
The Verge reported that Snapchat’s redesign is not helping to make money, although it is (or, something) making new users join but was not able to make more money per user. Snap Inc. shares fell sharply after the quarterly results were even below the analyst expectations. Analyst expected $243.55 million whereas Snap Inc. posted the revenue of $230.7 million.
For now, CEO Spiegel said that company is focused on optimizing redesign based on ongoing experimentation and learning. “When we separated friends’ Stories from creator Stories, we also moved them to the left side of the camera and merged them into the Chat Feed. We learned that combining watching Stories and communicating with friends in 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.”
A few months back Snapchat changed the design of its platform to make it easier for all the users. Toe company made some changes to make it better for all user, but it made around 1.2 million people hate the platform. The redesigned interface wasn’t that much good and turned more difficult for the users to access Snapchat. Many people raised an appeal on charge.org to roll back to the previous design of the platform, and the company took it very seriously and acknowledged that the new look made it more uncomfortable for people to use the app. The company then decided to make some changes in the application.
Now again a redesign of the application is here, which has been launched to appease 1.2 million disgruntled users. Now this new and updated version brings chats and snaps to the chronological order and stories on the right-hand side of the app. Now this will separate the stories from the friends and the brand-generated content. To make it more comfortable both the personal and branding or subscription content will look different.
Earlier also the changes were made for the iOS version of the application, and this time even the differences can majorly be observed in the iOS versions. Snapchat has not confirmed the release date of this update yet, but this might hot the iOS users very soon, as the company won’t carry the old and uncomfortable design for longer.
The redesign was revealed in February, the reason behind revamping of the application is because the app got so bloated. Snapchat’s chief executive Evan Spiegel said that the common complaint about the redesign was the mixed content from friends, creators, influencers, and publishers. Now to regain the place in the market the company has now separated the user-generated and brand-generated content from each other.
It is still not confirmed when will Android users will be able to use the new redesigned Snapchat. Snapchat press representative did not respond to the request for comment.
