Snap is testing a “simplified version of Snapchat,” CEO Evan Spiegel wrote in a letter to employees published on Snap’s website Tuesday. The CEO says the simplified version aims to improve the platform’s accessibility and usability. For those that remember Snapchat’s 2018 redesign, this news may do little to stoke confidence.
Spiegel attempted to rally employee spirits with his letter on Tuesday after a depressing year for the company’s stock price, which has fallen nearly 50% in 2024.
“Investors are concerned that we aren’t growing faster,” said Spiegel in the letter.
The “simplified” Snapchat may be an attempt to capture older users, who are historically perplexed by the app’s not-so-intuitive design. Snapchat does a lot better at attracting younger audiences, who seem to just get the app. But this isn’t the first time Snapchat has tried to reconcile these issues.
You might remember Snap’s 2017 earnings call when Spiegel admitted that he’s heard, “Snapchat is difficult to understand or hard to use,” particularly for older folks. Months later, Snap pushed out a major redesign to reclaim those users, jamming Stories between private messages, among other changes that ended up infuriating more users than it attracted.
A 2018 Change.org petition to “remove the new Snapchat update” received 1.2 million signatories, while celebrity influencers like Kylie Jenner, Chrissy Teigen and Marques Brownlee expressed their frustration. But even worse, the redesign cratered the platform’s ad views and revenue, alienating its younger userbase while failing in its bid to attract older folks. By May of 2018, Snap was scrambling to roll back some of the changes.
Spiegel writes in Tuesday’s letter that early tests of the simplified redesign have been “directionally positive,” though the CEO notes “we will be thoughtful and deliberate about making a change of this magnitude.” He’s almost definitely alluding to the 2018 redesign failure, which I’m sure no one at Snap has forgotten about.
The announcement of a new, simplified version of Snapchat was tucked into Spiegel’s broader musings about Snap’s business strategy. He claimed that Snap’s venture into augmented reality glasses — which it calls Spectacles — would yield a market with no competitors. Perhaps he’s pretending that Meta’s AR glasses, Meta Ray-Bans, simply don’t exist?
In an effort to stimulate Snapchat’s struggling ad division, Spiegel also announced new placements for ads, called Sponsored Snaps and Promoted Places. The former allows advertisers to send Snapchats directly to users’ chat inboxes, and the latter lets advertisers promote destinations on Snap Map.
