Big news is trending in Snapchat World. This will show the tale of two groups.
The big news from Wall Street – Investors have been convinced Snapchat can fight Instagram.
The owner of Snapchat reported on Tuesday, February 6th that growth in users and revenue for Q4 shows it can survive competition with Facebook’s Instagram. Shares jumped up more than 20%.
This is good news for investors as many who invested in it felt the tumultuous downturn when all excitement seemed to fade as the share price dropped consistently.
According to FactSet, Snapchat’s daily active users rose to 187 million as of December 31, 2017.
Daily active users jumped by 18% compared to the previous year and revenue is at 285.7 million which is an increase of 72%, nothing to scoff at.
Snapchat has been the pioneer of many features including photo filters and stories that Instagram decided to copy.
With big deep pockets at Facebook Inc, it seemed that while they were a copycat, Instagram still was able to take from the pioneer Snapchat.
Ads on Snapchat were snatched up by large brands, household names but in the third and fourth quarter of 2017, small businesses made a name for themselves. The revenue from small businesses doubled in that time.
Chief Strategy Officer Imran Khan said, “We know that in order to truly scale our business, advertising on Snapchat has to be really easy.”
This is true, although one may question how easy because the Facebook ad manager is not particularly for the newbie investor. (The Facebook Ad Manager also controls where Instagram ads happen)
Now here comes the issue I alluded to earlier. Reuters reports “In addition to fixing bugs, the company is redesigning Snapchat to make it easier to use. The new version had rolled out to 40 million users and would launch worldwide in the first quarter.”
Well that change is taking effect now and the top trending topic on Twitter is “Snapchat” as of this evening.
The unfortunate part for Snapchat is the sentiment of these changes is not a positive one.
Here’s a snapshot of the chatter on the Snapchat trend:
That new Snapchat update just made me hate Snap ?????
— Meikks ? (@LoveMeikko) February 7, 2018
@Snapchat @snapchatsupport @Snap https://t.co/To8695amDh
— Dylan Johnston (@ItDyl) February 7, 2018
Snapchat you just downgraded, Please remove this update. It’s disgusting ?
— jasmine rodriguez (@jasrodriguuezz) February 7, 2018
Que horrible que esta Snapchat ?
— ?Irma Pinell ? (@pinell2_morpi) February 7, 2018
if it ain’t broke don’t fit it @Snapchat
— caylie (@caynoelll) February 7, 2018
If you love yourself, DO NOT update @Snapchat
— alessandra (@AlessandraCont2) February 7, 2018
There’s more, comment after comment expresses the confusion with the new redesign, and the fact that many people are being turned off.
Many are suggesting that if you haven’t updated the app, don’t.
Here we see the conflict between what Wall Street thinks works vs what the users think works.
Snapchat may need to backtrack, let’s see what they listen to.
An excellent lesson in listening to your users/customers/clients first.
