Snap got destroyed by Wall Street today after a horrible Q3 earnings where revenue and user growth fell well under expectations. So to get things going in the right direction, CEO Evan Spiegel says Snapchat will make some bold moves not everyone will like. Specifically, it’s redesigning the app to be easier for older people to use, and it’s using data to power an algorithmically sorted Stories feed instead of the strictly reverse-chronological one it uses now. In the prepared remarks for today’s earnings call, Spiegel wrote about these changes: Snapchat currently uses a strictly reverse-chronological feed for Stories With only 2.9 percent user growth, to 178 million daily users, Snapchat just isn’t growing fast enough to satisfy investors or keep up with Facebook’s clones. Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status both now have 300 million daily users, dwarfing the app they cloned. In April, I implored Snapchat to move to an algorithmically sorted Stories feed to make it easier for people to find their best friends and things they care about, instead of using the reverse-chronological feed that shows what happens to have been posted most recently. Right now, Snapchat’s content is scattered across the Stories list, the Discover channel, search and Snap Map. Snapchat could benefit from using all its data on what people watch to curate a personalized feed of the most relevant content from across the app. That could be best friends, influencers, premium Shows, topic-based Stories Search compilations and peeks into interesting nearby places, landmarks and events. But if Snap screws up these redesigns and new features, it could see even more teens abandon the app. There’s a big risk that teens say they liked the old Snapchat better, and might as well just use Instagram. Spiegel and Snap have historically relied on instincts rather than data to design products. But now those instincts have led Snap astray, and it will require a philosophical shift as well as a product one to save the company.
Snapchat is redesigning its app, in a move its CEO, Speigel, has conceded is a risk that could be disruptive to the business in the short term. The changes will introduce a new personalised Stories feed using an algorithm to show users content likely to be of most interest to them, in place of the existing chronological feed. The social media platform's revenue and user growth have both fallen below expectations in the latest quarter, and Evan Spiegel told investors the redesign would make the app easier to use and help increase engagement and monetisation.