Snapchat has started rolling back its redesign, as research shows how wildly unpopular it was with millennials
- Snapchat has started rolling out the redesign of its wildly unpopular redesign, with iOS users receiving the update.
- It brings friends' Snapchat Stories back on the same page as ones from celebrities. Both snaps and chats are once again in chronological order.
- The changes come as YouGov research shows just how much millennials hated the new look.
Snapchat has begun rolling back its controversial redesign, as new research shows how wildly unpopular the new look was with millennials.
Snap announced in April that it would test changes to its redesign with a small group of users, while the company confirmed this month that the test would eventually roll out to everyone.
As of Thursday, iOS users are seeing the changes.
The updated design reunites on the same page your friends' Snapchat Stories with those that come from celebrities. Furthermore, both snaps and chats are once again in chronological order. You can see the changes here:
When the firm announced its Q1 earnings earlier this month, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel called the redesign of the redesign an "optimizing" process "based on our ongoing experimentation and learning."
The changes coincided with new research, which underlines how staggeringly unpopular the original redesign was after Snap began rolling it out late last year.
The app's impression score, a YouGov measure that asks consumers whether they have an overall positive or negative impression of a brand, fell off a cliff among 18 to 34 year olds in the US.
YouGov, the polling company, said Snapchat wiped out more than two years' worth of positive feelings among millennials in one swoop.
And they voted with their feet too. Snapchat's number of daily active users rose by just 2%, to 191 million, in the first three months of the year - the slowest sequential growth rate since Snap went public last year.
Analysts said the Snapchat redesign was a symptom of "a poorly structured company that is demonstrating a clear pattern of mismanagement."
Snap shares fell to a record low of $11.22 the day after its earnings disaster, below its previous low of $11.28. Shares stood at $11.01 early Friday morning.