Snapchat’s Controversial Redesigned Starts Rolling Out

Over the past few months, Snapchat has been facing the consequences of a controversial redesign. That led to 1.2 million people signing a petition in hopes that Snapchat would revert the redesign to its original form. The company acknowledged that the “new Snapchat has felt uncomfortable for many people,” and now the company is listening to some of those requests for change and is ready to compile to their request. And Today, a new survey shows just how much that redesign has affected the public’s perception of Snapchat, but the company is also starting to rollout some changes to its app’s design.

A new survey from YouGov Brand Index, shared by Recode, shows that Snapchat’s user sentiment fell by 73 percent following the full rollout of the redesign earlier this year:

“Its user sentiment — measured by having consumers rank their impression of a brand on a scale of 100 for “very positive” to -100 for “very negative” — among 18- to 34-year-old U.S. consumers declined 73 percent”.

Furthermore, on the same scale, most user’s feelings among millennials fell from a high of 30 down to a low of 8 following the redesign. And finally their satisfaction fell from 27 to a low of 12 last month.The survey is notable in that millennials largely make up Snapchat’s target audience and it will be can be  hard to win them back.

The company announced its Q1 earnings earlier this month, with its shares which 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.

In April, Snap announced 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. 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:

The company has stood its ground in regards to the new design as is CEO Evan Spiegel in a statement to Recode explained that people will get used to it over time.

Yesterday, Snapchat is officially rolling out as Recode reports:

“Snap is rolling out this redesigned redesign to most iOS users. It’s also eliminating the messaging inbox algorithm it used to prioritize some messages over others. Now, all messages in the inbox will appear in reverse-chronological order (like they used to).

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel called the redesign of the redesign an “optimising” process “based on our ongoing experimentation and learning.”

The redesign will currently be rolling out to “the majority” of users on iOS and it will be available as a free download on the App Store.