In a statement, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel attributed company’s problems in building the Snapchat user base to the February redesign, which moved certain features around and changed the ordering of posts.
“A change this big to existing behavior comes with some disruption,” Spiegel said on a conference call with investors and analysts in which he discussed the company’s disappointing quarterly report. He also said that the company will be tweaking the design to find a compromise that users will be happier with.
Snapchat started its first major redesign late last year and by February more than 1.2 million users had signed a petition calling for it to reverse the “annoying” changes.
The VERGE says “Snap CEO Evan Spiegel hoped that a Snapchat redesign would invigorate the platform’s advertisers and better cater ads to users. But in the months following its unveiling, 1.2 million users around the world signed a petition begging the company to reconsider. Snap followed through with its plans, and today, Snap confirmed that the redesign cost it to lose 2 percent of its daily active users — from 191 million to 188 million — in just a quarter.”
On Tuesday, Snapchat’s parent company, Snap, said it would redesign parts of the app’s redesign after the overhaul had dragged down its business.
Snap, Evan Spiegel, Snap’s chief executive, cited Snapchat’s redesign as a major reason for the disappointing performance.