After the disappointing financial results last November, the CEO of Snap. Inc., Evan Spiegel, had promised a revised and updated version of Snapchat, to make it easier and more immediate to use. Less than a month after that announcement, Spiegel has finally revealed the news, but there are doubts that they will be able to convince new users to subscribe to the service or to return those who had already signed up and no longer open the application.
Snapchat has been one of a kind for some time and has enjoyed undisputed success. Things changed a couple of years ago when Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, failed to acquire it and decided to compete with it by drawing inspiration from its operation (according to the most critics by copying it and that's it) to transform Instagram into the new Snapchat. The operation worked and now it is up to Spiegel – who recently listed his company on the stock exchange – to prove that his app has some hope and that there is life beyond Instagram.
What has changed
Observers and analysts who were expecting a radical Snapchat update were disappointed. To move within the various options of the app, there are still no menus immediately available, but only the possibility of moving from one screen to another, by sliding your fingers on the touchscreen. Snapchat continues to open with the camera, its most distinguishable feature, to encourage those who are using it to shoot something and share it directly with friends, or within Stories. The arrangement of the contents has changed, with the idea of making their consultation less chaotic.
Personal and friend-related content has been clearly separated from professional content created by news sites and companies that have commercial agreements with Snap. The separation is clear to the point that it was necessary to eliminate the Stories tab, which put together the contents produced by one's friends and those of companies, in a sort of flow reminiscent of the chaotic one in the News section (“News Feed”) on Facebook. The ways to take a Snap, find friends and connect with other users have remained essentially unchanged.
New sections
From the home screen, that of the camera, slide your finger to the right to access the Friends tab, which has undergone several changes. It collects both private messages and the Stories of your contacts, in order to make their recognition more immediate and understand that you are in the area of your personal content. In the event that a contact has produced a new story, their avatar is highlighted by a colored circle, a bit like in the list of Stories to see on Instagram.
If you slide your finger to the left from the camera, the Discover section opens instead, with content created by the media, other companies and very famous users on Snapchat. Snap's business partners have gotten better exposure, because the Discover tab is immediately accessible to the right of the camera without the intermediate step of the Stories tab, but no longer having their content mixed with that of friends you follow on Snapchat could be more difficult. get noticed.
Auto Advance
When a Story ends, Snapchat automatically skips to the next, without having to tap the screen. This feature already existed on the application, but at the end of the summer it had been removed amid complaints from several users.
Algorithms
Those of Snap were inspired by the functioning of Netflix to create an algorithm that suggests contents based on their interests and on the things they have already seen. The system, they promise, is different from Facebook, which uses not only those parameters to determine what to show in the News section, but also other variables related to what their friends have seen and content with the most likes and shares. Spiegel thinks his approach is better, but we'll get to that shortly. Another algorithm instead takes care of listing the contacts in the Friends tab not chronologically, but according to how much you interact with each of them and at what times of the day. The idea is that in this way the friends with whom you want to exchange messages, at any given moment, are always among the first on the list.
Snapchat against “bubbles”
In an editorial published on Axios, Evan Spiegel explained his vision behind the new Snapchat update, without sparing criticism towards of Facebook and the way its News section works:
Personalized News Feed has revolutionized the way people share and access content. But let's be honest: it came at a huge cost to the facts, our minds and the entire media industry. It's a tricky problem to solve because the obvious benefits that have driven the growth of social media – more friends! I like it more! more free content! – are also the things that threaten him in the long run.
Spiegel thinks that Snapchat, like WhatsApp to another extent, are primarily services for communicating with a small number of people and for expressing oneself instead of posting things that everyone, or very large groups of people can see indiscriminately, as happens on Facebook. and on other social networks. He writes that the same mechanisms of frenzied sharing, in search of a “Like” and other acknowledgments, have contributed to the much debated phenomenon in recent months of false news and their ability to influence information if not entire elections.
According to Spiegel, Snapchat should be used to communicate “visually” with your friends, in a personal and private way, not to access any content available online. The algorithms must serve to encourage this type of use of the application, not to create “bubbles” of information where one's opinions and tastes receive constant reinforcement with similar contents. Spiegel's most ambitious goal is “to separate the social part from the media, strengthening ties with one's friends and relations with the media”.
Will it work?
Spiegel's approach was greeted with skepticism by many observers, considering it a belated reaction to the stiff competition from Instagram, which to some extent has already realized the idea of having a social network where you can have closer relationships with friends, compared to what happens on Facebook. Other doubts are related to the fact that this new approach could penalize companies, because they could have less space and be less relevant in promoting their content. And Snap badly needs to get back on track, especially when it comes to generating revenue through partner companies and advertising.
In the quarter ended October, its most recent, Snap generated revenues of $ 207.9 million, missing the analyst target of $ 235.5 million. The company's performance was also disappointing when it comes to the number of people using Snapchat every day: 178 million instead of the expected 180.5 million. Net losses were $ 443.2 million. Things have not gone any better as far as the company's alternative projects are concerned, which were announced with much fanfare a year ago. After the excitement of the first few weeks, the Spectacles sunglasses with a built-in camera remained unsold with a warehouse value to be absorbed of approximately $ 39.9 million.
Results below expectations in almost all sectors in which it is engaged led Snap to lose a lot of value on the stock market. Its stock value is now 20 percent lower than it was when it made its stock market debut in March. The stock market listing figure was probably overestimated, so a reduction was foreseeable, but not by nearly a fifth of the entire share value.
The current uncertainties and skepticisms are linked to the fact that it is difficult to glimpse in the news announced anything that could reverse the negative trends: Snap must first find new users who want to download on their phones and try Snapchat, but something would probably be needed. more convincing than a separation between application sections. The competition from Instagram is increasingly difficult to beat: it can count on the strength of the largest social network in the world, Facebook, and on a user base that continues to expand and that after the first suspicions has welcomed the Stories and the others. Snapchat-style news contained in the application. Instagram is the social network that right now has the best growth prospects in much of the world, unlike Snapchat, which is especially successful in the United States. As interesting and potentially effective as it is, Spiegel's approach is for the medium to long term, but it must clash with a reality that – with its strengths and weaknesses – moves much faster and is now oriented.
