Good and bad news...
It's generally accepted that Snapchat is not the most user-friendly app out there. It's not difficult to use, but the simplicity of other apps like Instagram have meant that it's fallen behind in the social media apps race.
Snapchat yesterday announced their Q3 earnings for 2017, where they added a total of 4.5 million new users. Not bad, but far below the expected eight million they'd predicted to add.
Ad rates also took another fall, and in what is an effort to combat slow user growth, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel announced that the app is set to undergo a redesign.
Plans are already underway for a large redesign of the app but with no timeline in place just yet for when it will be rolled out.
"One thing that we have heard over the years is that Snapchat is difficult to understand or hard to use, and our team has been working on responding to this feedback," Spiegel wrote in remarks for Tuesday’s Q3 earnings call. "As a result, we are currently redesigning our application to make it easier to use."
Spiegel stated that while the changes may be disruptive to the company in the short-term, the long-term benefits would make the disruption worthwhile. Spiegel wrote:
"There is a strong likelihood that the redesign of our application will be disruptive to our business in the short term, and we don’t yet know how the behavior of our community will change when they begin to use our updated application. We’re willing to take that risk for what we believe are substantial long-term benefits to our business."
Details on the redesign are sparse, but there's no doubting the announcement by Snapchat is a big deal in the tech world and in the race for social media superiority in general.
Snapchat have never felt the need to explain the app to their users, and were content to let people use it rather than talking them through the process of the app.
Now, they're admitting that this approach will only take them so far and they've to rethink their strategy to appeal to wider audience.
It's rumoured that Snapchat's Map Feature (the perils of which we discussed in detail before) will become a more prominent feature of the app, and will be moved from its present position behind the camera into a more easily accessible location.
But for now there's no word on when the new redesign will launch as the company comes to terms with lower than expected revenue, and 300,000 units of Snapchat Spectacles remain sitting idle and unsold.
