Snapchat has been in deep trouble for a while. It was an unexpected result. Before Snapchat went public, there were huge expectations and people thought the company could be the next evolution in how people communicate.
What went wrong for Snapchat?
However, that did not happen. The parent company Snap Inc. had a rough year ever since March. Its rival company Facebook has been busy cloning the most popular aspects of Snapchat to its own apps. This includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Snap reported disappointing third-quarter financial results Tuesday, with fewer users and less revenue than analysts had expected.
Its foray into the hardware world with the Snapchat Spectacles backfired too. A large quantity of the Spectacles did not sell which resulted in a loss of $40 million.
Anyways, in an earnings letter to the investors, the company CEO said there are plans underfoot to overhaul the app. The CEO Evan Spiegel’s full statement is given below.
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. As a result, we are currently redesigning our application to make it easier to use. 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 longterm benefits to our business.
Snap Inc. plans to make the app usable for a larger audience than what was targeted previously. The CEO further added that he plans to build an Android app from the ground up which seems to be separate from the big remake project.
