Snapchat has officially decided to abandon its plans for a simplified version of its app, opting instead to refine its existing interface. The occasion is the company’s Q1 2025 earnings announcement. This permanent decision comes after seven months of usage of a new app that completely removed the Snap Map and Stories tab. Even with a modest dip in daily active users (DAUs) in North America, Snapchat is still on the upswing overall around the world.
During the testing phase, the company explored a simplified navigation bar that consolidated the app into three icons: chat, camera, and Spotlight, Snapchat’s competitor to TikTok. User feedback showed that power users actually preferred this design. These users often depended on the Search Map and Stories features.
Snapchat currently has 99 million daily active users in North America. That’s down from 100 million in the prior quarter and 100 million this time last year. The platform’s global DAUs reached 460 million, up 38 million YoY. Snapchat just hit a much bigger milestone as it crossed the 900 million MAUs worldwide.
Based on these findings, Snapchat is currently testing a new “refined five-tab interface” that keeps all the current tabs. We hope this new format makes navigating the user experience easier by bringing user favorites together under one clear design. By relocating Spotlight right next to the Camera icon, users have instant access to a variety of content. Yet, they are able to take advantage of all the rich experiences that Snapchat provides.
“Our most engaged Snapchatters consistently demonstrated a preference for a five-tab layout, favoring the familiarity of tile-based content discovery and a dedicated Map tab,” – Snap
Even Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said it was a mistake to put users through such a radical new design. He remarked, “In terms of the simple Snapchat design, we learned a lot from the redesign, but ultimately found that it was difficult, especially for power users, folks who really love Snapchat the way that it is who use the map and stories all the time, to really adopt the three-tab design, which made it harder to find stories and subscriptions and harder to find the map.”
Through all these challenges plaguing North America, Snapchat recently announced a first-quarter revenue of $1.36 billion with 14% year-over-year growth. This revenue growth is a positive sign that even as user engagement might have been uneven in certain areas, the broader financial performance is still strong.
Leave a Reply