Petition to scrap Snapchat redesign hits 1 million
Credit: CNBC
- A petition urging Snapchat owner Snap to reverse the redesign of its app has surpassed 1 million signatures.
- Snapchat has been rolling out the update, aimed at making the app easier to navigate.
- Nic Rumsey, who started the petition, said the redesign "has made many features more difficult" to use.
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A petition urging Snap to reverse the redesign of its Snapchat app has surpassed 1 million signatures.
Snap has been rolling out the Snapchat update to users over the past few weeks. Chief Executive Evan Spiegel said on the company's full-year earnings call recently that the aim of the resdesign was to make the app "simpler and easier to use, especially for older users."
However, there appears to be a lot of users that don't like it.
A Change.org campaign titled "Remove the new Snapchat update" — started by Australian user Nic Rumsey — had 1,011,081 signatures at 07:28 a.m. ET Thursday, with the aim of reaching 1.5 million.
Rumsey wrote that the update "has, in fact, made many features more difficult" to use.
"Many 'new features' are useless or defeat the original purposes Snapchat has had for the past years," the petition says.
The aim is to "convince Snap Inc to change the app back to the basics, before the new 2018 update."
A Snap spokesperson told CNBC that "updates as big as this one can take a little getting used to, but we hope the community will enjoy it once they settle in."
Some studies have suggested that the Snapchat redesign is pushing people to Facebook-owned Instagram, which has a rival product called "Stories."
In 2017, Snapchat struggled with growing its user base thanks to stiff competition from Instagram. Many analysts had blamed the design of the app.
Spiegel said on the recent earnings call that the initial response to the app update had been positive.
"While we are still very early in the roll-out, we are optimistic about the potential to unlock additional growth with the redesign of our application," the Snap CEO said. "As expected, it will take time for our community to get used to the changes, but overall, we are pleased with the initial results and will be making the redesign available to our entire community in Q1.
"There is a lot of work ahead as we optimize the updated application, but our early observations support the thesis behind the new architecture and the many growth opportunities that it provides."
Snap's recent efforts to grow its business appear to be paying off. The company's reported revenues and user growth surpassed Wall Street's expectations in the fourth quarter of 2017. Shares of Snap are up over 33 percent year-to-date.