Things go wrong for Snapchat in 2018

Michaël from m7b5 Digital

Blog section Apr. 03 2018

Snapchat, popular with teenagers and celebrities, is going through a difficult period. More and more stars sulk and call their fans to follow.

This disenchantment goes back to the end of 2017, when Snapchat's parent company decided to radically change its interface.

"In its new layout, the application is confusing, with hybrid interfaces in which media and reality TV stars meet, while friends or family go unnoticed," noted Mashable in February.

A good thing for the competition

These changes have led more and more users to turn to Instagram, the photo application that launched a system similar to Snapchat's in 2016.

More than 1.25 million people have already signed a petition for a return to the old design.

Many personalities have decided to drop this social network. The latest on this weekend is the model Chrissy Teigen, complaining that her fans were struggling to find it. Before her, reality TV star Kylie Jenner, the youngest of the Kardashian sisters, had dropped the Snap stock price on the stock market dramatically.

One of her tweets, in which she explained to no longer use the social network, caused a 6% drop in shares of the company, a loss of $ 1.3 billion.

The Myspace Curse?

It's not just the interface that's a problem at Snapchat. At the beginning of March, the singer Rihanna called all her fans to leave the social network because an advertisement proposed the slap had been validated.

Snap may have apologized for this "disgusting" ad, the damage was done: the fall of the stock has caused the company to lose $ 800 million more in stock market value.

Some analysts compare the fall of Snapchat to that of MySpace, the social network bought at the peak of its glory in 2005 by News Corp. for $ 580 million. The arrival of Facebook had hurt him to the point that MySpace was sold for just $ 35 million in 2011.

But all is not lost. Snapchat "continues to have about 200 million users a day, which is consistent," said analyst Daniel Ives to the American daily "USA Today".

"The slingshot of users, like Kylie and Rihanna's, is a setback but [he] will eventually get by," he says.

Source: France24