Snapchat started rolling out its major redesign late last year and it wasn’t received well by Snapchat users, fans or critics. The redesign was considered so bad that users started a Change.org petition against Snapchat, and social media star Kylie Jenner even renounced the app for its ‘sad’ new interface. Despite the backlash, Snapchat saw a surge in new installs and user growth after the update and the company chose to stick with the redesign.
Snapchat might finally be coming to terms with the repercussions of the redesign, as its currently testing a redesign of the redesign with a small fraction of its users. According to a recent report from Recode, Stories posted by friends, which were separated from Stories created by brands and celebrities in the redesign, are now being added back to the Discover page.
While it’s just a small change, it’s a clear sign that Snap is finally realizing that separating Stories into two feeds led to a massive decline in views and engagement, especially for those created by brands and celebrities.
As of now, Snap’s idea behind this isn’t entirely clear, but a company spokesperson claimed that the company is “always listening to our community and will continue to test updates that we hope will give Snapchatters the best possible experience on our platform.” It’s also speculated that Snapchat might be considering a unified Stories section, to pitch professional content and increase the number of view generated by publisher content.
The new redesign also adds “Subscriptions” to the main Discover page which will also allow users to easily find the creators they’ve subscribed to from the same page. A Snap spokesperson further revealed that “With this test, we’re retaining that idea [of separating friends and publishers], but bringing back one place for talking and one place for watching – organizing around users’ behavior, not just relationships”. As of now, Snapchat has released no official information about a wider roll out of the new redesign.
