Snapchat introduced a redesign early 2018 of its flagship app intended to promote more intimate sharing among friend groups while pushing professionally produced content into a separate feed. The redesigned Snapchat includes a new dynamic friends page. That incorporates both chat messages and ephemeral stories, and pushes items from your close friends to the top of the feed for the first time.
Snap team 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. Snap confirmed that the redesign cost it to lose 2 percent of its daily active users. That is from 191 million to 188 million — in just a quarter.
Snapchat’s advertising problem.
The CEO of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel also feels advertising took a hit because of the atrocious redesign mentioned earlier:
But at the same time they’re human. When there’s a lot of negative news in the press every day, it does give people pause. It does influence buying decisions. But at the same time they’re human. When there’s a lot of negative news in the press every day, it does give people pause. It does influence buying decisions.
Snapchat and Africa
The problem why Snapchat isn’t a big hit in Africa and why they will remain small fish when compared to FB, Instagram and WhatsApp is simply because the app uses too much data.
The fact that people now have these features on Whatsapp, Facebook and Instagram means they are even more unlikely to end up signing up for Snapchat. When they have a bunch of more popular applications serving the same functionality. In Africa I would go as far as calling the service a glorified image editor. Apart from that, I don’t see them making much of a dent this side. Unless of course they introduce something new that entirely shifts the conversation of Snap vs the other guys.
Secondly, the fact that very few people use the application also means advertisers within the continent have no incentive to actually embrace the platform within Africa.
Overall, it’s not great news for investors that Snapchat lost users, especially considering how heavily Instagram is now gunning for it. Can they ever compete with bigger rivals?
