Snapchat's Recent Redesign Resulted in Millions of Lost Users

[MacRumors]

Snapchat's controversial redesign, introduced last November, caused it to lose millions of subscribers according to data shared today in its second quarter earnings results.

Snap said it had 188 million daily active Snapchat users during the second quarter of 2018, down from 191 million during the first quarter of the year.

In prepared remarks [PDF] on Snapchat's performance, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said that the two percent decline in daily active users was "primarily driven" by a lower frequency of use among the company's user base due to "the disruption caused by our redesign."

Spiegel said that Snapchat is working to iterate and improve the app based on community feedback, and he says that the major frustrations have been addressed.

While our Monthly Active Users continued to grow this quarter, we saw a 2 percent decline in our Daily Active Users. This was primarily driven by a slightly lower frequency of use among our user base due to the disruption caused by our redesign.

It has been approximately six months since we broadly rolled out the redesign of our application, and we have been working hard to iterate and improve Snapchat based on the feedback from our community. We feel that we have now addressed the biggest frustrations we've heard and are eager to make more progress on the tremendous opportunity we now have to show more of the right content to the right people.

Following the release of the redesigned app, more than 1.2 million users signed a petition asking for the change to be reversed.

In response, Snap rolled back some of the design changes, reverting Snaps and Chats back to chronological order and re-adding Stories from friends to the right side of the app. Snap also reintroduced the feature that allowed it to open up in camera mode, and users can again swipe left to view posts from friends.

The redesign of the app was initially aimed at appealing to a broader demographic and expanding Snapchat's user base, but Snapchat users were not prepared for the drastic change and did not become accustomed to the redesign as Snap had hoped.

Despite the fact that it's number of daily active users dropped, Snapchat brought in $262 million in revenue, an increase of 44 percent year-over-year.

Article Link: Snapchat's Recent Redesign Resulted in Millions of Lost Users

 

[Aston441]

I stopped using it because I can only stay logged into one device at a time. Nothing else I use had this limitation and I can't see any justification for it.

PITA

 

[Appleaker]

No surprise really, I don’t know why certain companies are so disconnected with users when they redesign their software. Microsoft has a similar situation with Skype. And the worse part is that they think they know better, but really it just results in the loss of users. A particularly bad move in Snapchats case since Instagram was already taking over, this redesign was the last straw for many.

 

[jbachandouris]

Now if only they would get of the childish color scheme, it might be worth using.

One device at a time? That’s stupid.

I’ve been using the Outlook app, but I really don’t like it that much.

 

[dan9700]

they ruined a once good app

 

[Nick A]

Not surprised. The re-design was awful. There was nothing wrong with the way it was before and no reason to change it, especially in such a drastic way that alters its functionality.

 

[martyjmclean]

I deleted my account in November after the redesign and don't miss it at all. After their disgusting racist + misogynistic views I'm glad to see them failing.

 

[Hazmat401]

And what is with social media not giving us our feeds in chronilogical order... I dont want to see my feed from 3 hours first.... I wanna see the feed from 5 mins ago

Very irritating

 

[bladerunner2000]

Isn't snapchat mainly for kids?

 

[PickUrPoison]

Snapchat's controversial redesign, introduced last November, caused it to lose millions of subscribers

Not according to the article; userbase actually grew. Average daily users =/= subscribers.

 

[gene731]

And what is with social media not giving us our feeds in chronilogical order... I dont want to see my feed from 3 hours first.... I wanna see the feed from 5 mins ago

Very irritating

I use Facebook only but I agree. Every time time I go on my Mac and choose chronological order then for some reason it will give me about maybe 7 posts in order then a message saying if I want to see more then I need to find more friends. Like they are holding back what I can see.

 

[coolfactor]

How do they make money, exactly? Ad impressions?

 

[TMRJIJ]

Isn't snapchat mainly for kids?

Kids who send nudes to each other?

 

[19SK91]

I‘ve tried using the App once only to follow some people. The UI confused me so much that I was looking for tutorials hoping I could find out how to use it. Deleted App and account shortly after.

 

[acorntoy]

Snapchat is pretty much the only major social media I use. I used to use it a lot, but the redesign is really awful and I don’t use it very much at all now. When I do post things like stories, half the people who watched them before the update check in now. They really destroyed their app.

 

[nt5672]

No surprise really, I don’t know why certain companies are so disconnected with users when they redesign their software. Microsoft has a similar situation with Skype. And the worse part is that they think they know better, but really it just results in the loss of users. A particularly bad move in Snapchats case since Instagram was already taking over, this redesign was the last straw for many.

Because UI designers think they are the cat's meow of the web/app. Just look at the poor UI from modern web sites and you will understand that being modern no longer means being the most usable. Modern UI is a fashion, just like modern technology design. For me its time to bring back the engineers and get rid of the fashionistas.

Being the technical leader of a team that redesigned a top web site I can tell you from personal experience that neither I nor the head of marketing were correct when we tried to predict the outcome of usability studies. Things we thought did not need to be tested because they were proven in practice turned out to be dead wrong, at least for our user base.

We ended up spending more money on usability testing than on web site development. Something most people are too arrogant to acknowledge as necessary. But we made a significant improvement in sales directly attributed to the usability improvements. The science is there, but it is being grossly ignored.

 

[Mansu944]

I deleted my account in November after the redesign and don't miss it at all. After their disgusting racist + misogynistic views I'm glad to see them failing.

Care to elaborate? I’m genuinely curious.

 

[palmerc2]

In my opinion social media, especially Snapchat, has ruined society.

 

[Guda.FL]

Call me stupid, but i always felt the ui was all over the place and never really learned how to use snapchat. Quirky odd app, even though mh friends loved it...I always found it confusing.

 

[martyjmclean]

Isn't snapchat mainly for kids?

The fact an app is targeted towards kids somehow makes a difference? I'm 20 and don't know a single kid using Snapchat. My 55 year old mum on the other hand...

Care to elaborate? I’m genuinely curious.

Their CEO is a certified sleaze, they ridicule domestic abuse victims and there's also this gem from their employees.

 

[kirky29]

The only reason I keep using Snapchat is because I've got a stupid a 1000 days streak with someone, plus it's the only way a few old work friends would keep in contact.

The app is insanely bad on Android, it's slow and laggy, the camera quality feels bad and zooming is way too fast. I loathe how it sends me a notification that someone is typing too...

 

[itsmilo]

The app has become redundant since Instagram introduced stories

 

[kirky29]

The app has become redundant since Instagram introduced stories

The problem with stories on Instagram is that it doesn't feel personal, with Snapchat my direct everyday friends send me photos, like those pointless ones of 'oooh look at this nice car'. Instagram is full of people trying to sell me things or of random beaches and their vacation pics.

 

[RamGuy]

How do we know its all due to the re-design? I bet it has more to do with Facebook just copying everything Snapchat does and implementing it into Instagram. There is no denying the fact that Instagram has gotten 99,99% the same as Snapchat these days so it makes perfect sense for users to start jumping ships as they get "bored" with their current app.

I don't really mind the re-design, but the way feed is working is really annoying as your contacts/conversations jumps around like crazy and I often notice when you have a lot of contacts that some conversations just stops updating so the day after I can send a new snap to someone only to then see that they actually sent me something the previous day it was just not showing in the app until I sent them something back...

They also insecticide you to keep Snapstreaks and whatnot going. But there is still no easy way to send a snap to your snapstreaks in a efficient manner. You still need to manually scroll through the list and select each and every contact one-by-one and often you will have streaks with more people than you are allowed to send to in one swipe... I have to spend like 10-15 minutes just to keep my streaks going which feels like a huge waste of time. It should be possible to do it so much faster.

The app is also draining a crazy amount of battery life these days. It might be due to a incompatibility with iOS 12 BETA's but the drain is out-of-control... Going through my streaks (10-20 min) takes me from 100% down to 85-90% and its doing so much stuff in the background. In 24 hours the Snapchat-app is normally active for 4-5 hours in the background draining up to 50% of my battery while I'm not even inside the app.. It's just crazy.

 

[Superhappytree]

In my opinion social media, especially Snapchat, has ruined society.

It is addictive poison. I’m so tired and bored of it all at this point. I’m tired of scrolling and tapping and scrolling and tapping through crap that I deep down don’t really care about. I used to love Snapchat and I didn’t stop using it because of the update, I just really can’t be bothered with it anymore, same with Instagram. I have no idea how people post multiple selfies every day 364 days a year amongst other crap. I used to post some myself but then realised how weird, pointless, and ridiculous it is. It makes you become so self absorbed, then again it does tend to attract narcissists the most but it only increases narcissistic behaviour in general. Many people post multiple stories to both their Snapchat and Instagram. Every. Damn. Day. It is pure madness and yet people don’t realise it and are perfectly okay with constantly doing it. Once you take a big step back away from it all though and see it from a birds eye point of view you soon realise how nuts it all is.

I also realised that I just kept seeing slightly different variations of the same s*** every single day. I don’t think many people realise that is exactly what they are doing because they are so consumed by it all. You could go cold turkey for a month and when you go back you haven’t missed anything that you haven’t already seen many times before really. It also wasn’t making me feel good seeing everyone with these supposed ‘perfect’ lives, it was making me anxious and miserable constantly comparing myself to others. I haven’t comlpletely quit it yet but I already feel better now that I’m not checking it as much.