Add Category
After a tumultuous 2017 that saw a $US2.2 billion ($2.8 billion) loss in its first quarter of public listing and hundreds of thousands of unsold video-recording sunglasses, Snap's run of bad luck seems to be continuing.
Users have taken to Twitter to slam a major update for the Snapchat app, which merges the original 'Stories' screen — where content could be shared for 24 hours — with the page used to display individual messages and snaps.
Snap misses forecasts for new users and sales
Snap Inc.'s Snapchat app added fewer users than projected in the first quarter, a sign that the young company may have trouble expanding its audience as Facebook Inc. copies its most popular features.
"Snapchat has had a complete rework in an update and honestly it's disgusting," one tweet read. "It's so weird to use and I don't know why it's been changed."
Another person begged Snapchat to "reverse the most recent update."
"It's absolutely horrendous @Snapchat," he tweeted.
In the redesign, users must swipe right from the camera to access both Stories and personal snaps from friends. A swipe left now results in a 'Discover' grid featuring photos and videos from brands, as well as trending content curated by Snap itself.
The change was hinted at late last year by Snap CEO Evan Spiegel.
"We're separating the social from the media and reorganising Snapchat around your relationships to make it more personal," Spiegel states in a promotional video from November.
But app metrics leaked to The Daily Beast show a different story, suggesting the update is driven by an urge to increase Snapchat's ability to monetise through branded content.
According to the Daily Beast article, only 20 per cent of Snapchat's 178 million users accessed the Discover page on the old format, where it was two swipes away from the main camera function.
Increasing the accessibility of the page may be a bid to increase views on paid content from advertisers and media outlets like Buzzfeed and Cosmopolitan, which currently constitute the lion's share of the company's revenue.
There has also been speculation that the integrating of snaps with Stories — features that The Daily Beast reports are much more highly used than Discover — will lead to new monetisation strategies that insert advertisements into the app's messaging function.
Snap has yet to comment on the data.