It’s been a wild ride for Snapchat.
From a product design/UX standpoint, their ability to invent new, better ways to communicate and onboard users has been incredible…
The camera-as-a-homepage approach, leveraging a user’s phone contacts to grow virally, making photos and messages disappear, offering Geofilters and Lenses… they all seem like basic and obvious design strategies/patterns today; however, this stuff was revolutionary just five years ago.
Interestingly, the seamless UI/UX that contributed to Snap’s early meteoric growth started to spoil in November of 2017 when they rolled out a major product update.
In my opinion, in Snap’s attempt to offer more features, what was a focused, frictionless app has become a cluttered mess – one that takes work to wrap your head around – even for the savviest of users. When you combine this with how well Instagram has integrated Stories into its app, it’s no surprise that Snap’s growth has stalled.
Snap raised $4.9 billion. With that amount of cash raised and a huge pool of investors to please, their executive and product team must have felt enormous pressure to add new features rather than refine existing ones.
Snap’s story is still being told. Few thought there was room for another big social network when Snap launched in 2011. The Snap team proved the critics wrong.
Snap’s stock has traded as high as $24. Today, it’s trading at $6.61.
Clearly, few investors think the future is bright for Snap. Perhaps Snap can prove these skeptics wrong again and be relevant for years to come. Or maybe Snap’s success will be as ephemeral as the content shared within its app.
What do you think? Is Snap’s future bright or bleak? Why?