Snapchat’s New Update Triggers Revolt by Millions of Teens

Snapchat is an Android and iOS app that allows users to send pictures, videos and messages privately to friends for only a short period of time before they become inaccessible. Snapchat is about instant communication received on your devices. Photos on Snapchat can now also broadcast to your “story” for friends and followers to see.

About a week ago, Snapchat launched their newest design, updating the app for users. Their goal was to split the Snapchat up into two sections. First, consolidating friend content on the left side and media content on the right. This new update has triggered teens and they want the old version of Snapchat back. The new update on Snapchat is more difficult, making it harder to operate the app. Teens believe that the new features on the app are useless and defeat the actual purpose of Snapchat. Teens have created a petition on Change.org to get the older update back and running. This petition already has received a half a million signatures. Many teens have considered deleting the app due to the confusion.

Speaking for myself as well as some of my friends, I can say that we aren’t happy with the update. With an app like this one, it shouldn’t be this confusing and difficult to maneuver. Theses apps are supposed to be user friendly for all ages. For example, I recently made my mom a Snapchat to stay in touch with her for instant communication. Before the new update she was having trouble with it just due to the fact she wasn’t as technological savvy. Now with the newer update, it is going to be a lot harder explaining to her how to use it.

You might ask yourself what is the difference if the app is now more difficult to use, users will just have to take time and adjust to it? One main issue with the app being so confusing now is that users on Snapchat are losing their “streaks”. A Snapchat streak is when you send direct snapchats back and forth with a friend for a number of consecutive days. Users will make sure to log onto Snapchat daily to send their “streaks” and make sure they don’t lose them. Snapchat rewards long streaks with special emojis. Losing long streaks could be frustrating to teens and now with the new update it makes it harder to keep track.

Teens hope that with over millions of users not happy, Snapchat will try and fix the problem making modifications to the app.

Lorenz, Taylor. “Snapchats New Update Triggers Revolt by Millions of Teens.” The Daily Beast, The Daily Beast Company, 11 Feb. 2018, www.thedailybeast.com/snapchats-new-update-triggers-revolt-by-millions-of-teens?ref=author.

 

 

 

 

 

8 thoughts on “Snapchat’s New Update Triggers Revolt by Millions of Teens

  1. When I saw the new Snapchat update, I immediately thought about our UX discussion in class….aka what were their developers and designers thinking??

    To be fair, I think (I think?) I understand where the company is coming from. As you stated, the company wanted to separate personal friend interactions and broad social media and news interactions. Saying to separate the two categories makes perfectly logical sense, although Snapchat completely failed at their execution of if. What they left the users with was a jumbled mess of new icons, new and different placements of buttons, new menus. Everyone is now confused and angry. If the app design wasn’t broken, why fix it? To boot, on their Twitter support page, I saw them warning people to back up their memories because all media could be lost upon logging out of one’s account.

    Honestly, they should revert the app to it’s previous design and go back to the drawing board.

  2. It was interesting to be one of the last people to get the Snapchat update because all I saw on different social media platforms were hundreds of people complaining about the new Snapchat. Personally, I thought that they must be overreacting and exaggerating, it couldn’t be that bad right?

    Snapchat basically threw its user friendly platform out the window with this update, and eliminated what its users appreciated most about it: simplicity. However, even though Snapchat is aware of all the negative feelings towards its new update they aren’t planning to undo it anytime soon. They are an extremely large and powerful social entity and can guarantee that even though we all hate the new update, nobody is going to boycott snapchat. Snapchat is well aware that we’re all going to deal with it, adjust to whatever Snapchat gives us, and continue using their product on a daily or hourly basis.

    This update is an example that even though Snapchat users voice their concerns, and the company is aware of the negative responses, they will choose to update and design the app how they please if it benefits the business. According to Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, ““We’re willing to take that risk for what we believe are substantial long-term benefits to our business.”

    Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/snapchat-new-update-redesign-why-evan-spiegel-social-media-changes-a8202321.html

  3. Personally, I am not a huge fan of the update, but I do understand the reasoning behind it. Snapchat was attempting to make the interface faster and easier for people to use. Like mentioned in the post, Snapchat used to have 4 interfaces. One interface shows all of the users friend’s stories. Another shows the people you have most recently snapped as well as the streaks. One was the actual camera that you snap pictures with, the last one has stories of trending celebrities or media/entertainment outlets.

    Snapchat has now reduced that number to 3, merging the story tab and streak tab. Traditional user experience design would have you believe that 3 interfaces is better than 4. In this case less is more. However, when an app as widespread and popular as snapchat suddenly makes a significant change like interface design, getting such a large amount of people to suddenly figure out the new features will get your company some backlash. It is natural that people do not want to change something they are comfortable with, clearly teams were comfortable with it. In this case, the mantra is: If its aint broke, dont fix it.

    Personally, I do not like the change. Getting used to having two previously separated staple feature of the app suddenly on the same tab is naturally a challenge to get used to. Is it a big deal in my opinion? Not really, companies get backlash all the time for changing the slightest thing. People went crazy when Instagram changed their app icon! It is a minor issue that people will get used to very shortly and soon forget about.

  4. I think that the Snapchat update was frustrating at first, but I have come around and discovered that I do not mind it. The worst part about it is that the simplicity of Snapchat is what made it one of the most downloaded apps of all time. Every new update has added more and more fluff, which is my biggest complaint. The newest update is just like any other update for me. People’s complaints about losing streaks or not being able to manuever throughout the app are too early. If you just started using something, it will always take time to adapt, no matter what it is.

    Tying the discussion back to class, it is safe to say that the usability and user interface of the new Snapchat is lacking, especially for an app that built its foundation on simplicity. While I do not have any major problems with the update, I can understand why people say that their parents are having a tough time navigating the app.

    I think that if Snapchat would have had an introduction to the new app that gives simple overview of how it works, the transition would have been much more smooth. The idea of a media tab and a personal tab is a good idea, the users of Snapchat are just confused.

  5. I definitely agree that the new Snapchat update is not very user friendly. I still don’t quite understand how to use the new features or how to watch stories. This is quite a problem because using an app should be self explanatory and easy to pick up. The Snapchat in the past was so good at keeping it simple, but now the app is getting out of hand. Like you said one big thing is that the ‘stories’ are difficult to figure out. Also, things that happen on the friends page do not show up in chronological order which is confusing to the user. I am interested to see if users get used to the update or if they will continue to complain enough to get a change in the new update.
    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/12/why-the-snapchat-redesign-is-so-bad.html

  6. While I agree that the new Snapchat update is far from simplified or easy to use, I am interested to see if users will learn to adjust to the app’s new interface. The article points out that Facebook also received backlash for their updated site back in 2008 however, they decided to fight through the criticism and now have more than 2 billion monthly users. Apps need to change to keep up with the current trends and remain relevant to users. Snapchat is just looking for a way to broaden their user demographic to include an older crowd.

    This article https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/the-snapchat-redesign-is-a-mess.html explains that Snapchat’s main goal is complete social media domination. By simplifying the app to have all friend related activities on one side and all media related activities on the other, Snapchat is hoping that it can keep up with apps such as Twitter in having its users use the app as the main way to learn about current events and news. While this may be a smart move in terms of attracting attention from more brands and media outlets, Snapchat may lose their younger teen users who do not care about news as much. I think this article’s suggestion of updating the interface to be more similar to Instagram by having personal chats in chronological order vertically with friends’ stories in chronological order horizontally at the top of the individual chats would be a popular idea among users of all age groups. Not only would this make the app more user friendly, but Snapchat could still keep its idea of having friend related activities on one side and media related activities on the other.

  7. I can relate very closely to this article. I find the new snapchat update to be extremely aggravating and not user-friendly. I don’t like the way that snapchat stories and snapchats from my friends show up all on one list. I liked when it was separated because I felt like it was a lot easier to tell what I was looking at. Snapchat was my favorite form of social media, but after this update, I can’t say that it is anymore. I know several of my friends have stopped going on snapchat since this update happened. I have noticed too that my stories have not been getting as many views as they normally get. I am assuming this is because recently posted stories are not as obvious, or people stopped using snapchat as much. It would definitely be in snapchat’s best interest to get rid of this new update, or somehow make it much more user friendly, or they are going to have a lot more people stop using snapchat. Myself and a lot of my friends signed the petition to get rid of this new snapchat, along with the millions of other people who signed it.

  8. I relate to this blog post directly. I too use Snapchat and have been using it for a while. I would very much agree that this new update is anything but user friendly. Snapchat is know for being one of the most successful social media app out there. For me specifically, I don’t know a person other than my parents that has a Snapchat. With that being said, I know countless amounts of people who’s parents do have Snapchats. And of all these people, everyone I’ve spoken to “absolutely hates it.” It’s not that people don’t like it, or find it kind of confusing but will get used to it. People hate it so much they’ve been searching ways to undo an update and writing angry comments to Snapchat to change it back to the original ways or at least give people the chance to undo it themselves. Another thing that has angered so many people is that many peoples Snapchat’s automatically updated, giving the user no choice. Of the people I’ve spoken to, no one has heard of the petition on Change.org but I’m sure after hearing about it, many more people will.

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