Snapchat begins rolling out redesign on iOS that reverses changes launched last year

Snapchat has started rolling out design changes for iOS devices that it announced during its first quarter earnings report.

Snapchat says a majority of iOS users will now have their Snaps and Chats in chronological order again, with friends’ Stories back on the right side of the app. The app also has added a separate Subscriptions feed for Stories from publishers and creators that users follow. (Content from publishers and creators that users are not subscribed to will display outside of the Subscriptions feed.)

During the first quarter earnings call earlier this month, CEO Evan Spiegel said these changes were based on the “experimentation and learning” that has happened since last year’s redesign.

“When we separated friends’ Stories from creator Stories [last November], we also moved them to the left side of the camera and merged them into the Chat feed. We learned that combining watching Stories and communicating with friends into the same place made it harder to optimize for both competing behaviors,” said Spiegel during the call.

The CEO says the latest redesign updates address the problem it created when it put Stories into the Chat feed but keeps the “structural” changes it made when it separated content from friends from creator content.

The company does not have a timeline for when its redesign efforts will be released on Android devices. Spiegel commented on Snapchat’s Android performance during the earnings call, saying it was “… still a weakness” for the company, but that they were making significant progress.

“Given the volume of changes we made with the redesign, a number of performance regressions contributed to a disproportionately negative impact among Android users,” said Spiegel.

Snapchat’s Q1 2018 revenue was down from its earnings during the previous quarter. The CEO attributed the loss in revenue to the major redesign that included separating user content from creator content.

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Amy Gesenhues

Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media’s General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.