Kylie Jenner yesterday tweeted that she wasn’t using Snapchat anymore, and today the company’s stock took a major hit. But it wasn’t just Kylie who’s falling out of love with the app — users are already on their way out due to a very unpopular new update.
The tweet, by itself, doesn’t sound too damning:
sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.
— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 21, 2018
Considering Kylie recently gave birth to her daughter Stormi, I initially took this to mean that she wasn’t able to keep up her previous social media schedule. However, couple this with a tweet from earlier this month, and it looks like more like an indictment of the app:
Mm just saw the new Snapchat.. I don’t know how i feel about it! What do you guys think?
— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 9, 2018
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Today, Snap shares on the stock market dropped by 7 percent, and Snap lost as much as $1 billion in market value. It certainly sounds like Kylie was the one who sent Wall Street into a panic, but she didn’t do it by herself.
While I have no doubt Kylie holds enough sway to get a few social media addicts to avoid the app, I don’t think the people who are migrating away from Snapchat are doing so strictly because of her. The schism in Snapchat started weeks ago, and it’s plain to see for anyone who’s watching the company’s fortunes closely.
The main reason people have been complaining about Snapchat lately — and have they ever been complaining — is due to the app’s redesigned layout. Reviews on both the App Store and Google Play are littered with harsh words about the unintuitive new design. There’s even a Change.org petition asking Snap to kill the update. It’s been signed by a whopping 1.2 million people at the time of this writing — a non-insubstantial portion of Snapchat’s userbase.
Perhaps the most infuriating part of it, for those who want to see Snapchat changed, is that the company has made it clear they have no intention of complying. Last week, a spokesperson told Variety that Snap is essentially waiting for the users to get used to the changes: “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.”
Snap responded to the petition directly two days ago, saying the app’s new changes “will adapt to you the more that you use it.” The comments replying to this are decidedly frosty.
So the writing was on the wall long before Kylie admitted her own move away from Snapchat. Sure, her tweets may have been the catalyst for the stock market panic — considering her popularity, she makes a good barometer for public opinion about Snapchat. But she’s not the reason people are losing interest in the app.
For her part, Kylie doesn’t seem to be burning her bridges too badly. The last thing she had to say on the topic was more congenial:
still love you tho snap … my first love
— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 21, 2018
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