Snapchat Facing Image Issues

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When you roll out a new way of connectivity on a Social Network and society doesn't like it, you have a problem.  That's exactly what has happened to Snapchat since they rolled out changes to the platform that they are now trying to reverse according to MediaPost...

Since Snapchat began rolling out its controversial redesign late last year, the brand has taken a beating among consumers.

That’s according to the latest tracking study from YouGov, which shows that Snapchat’s “impression score” -- showing whether consumers have a positive or negative impression of a brand -- plummeted from a high of 30 in late January to a low of 8 in early April.

Remarkably, the 73% drop essentially scrubbed the positive consumer sentiment that Snapchat had built up since the beginning of 2016.

Satisfaction levels for the app among current users aged 18-34 followed a similar trajectory, the market research firm found.

Reaching a “satisfaction score” of 27 in late January, millennials who identify as Snapchat users gave the brand a low score of 12 in mid-April. Kylie Jenner, who expressed her displeasure with Snapchat’s new layout earlier this year, likely contributed to Snapchat’s brand bashing.

Worse, fewer millennials report talking about the app with friends and family, these days. At present, only 25% of U.S. consumers aged 18-34 say they've discussed Snapchat in the past two weeks. Last January, that number stood 10 percentage points higher, at 35%.

Meanwhile, 26% of U.S. adults aged 18-34 indicate they use Snapchat at least once per day, compared to 3% of those aged 35 and older.

For Snapchat, the discouraging data coincides with efforts to fix its disastrous redesign.

At least for iOS users, the app is now offering a new layout that puts Snaps and Chats back in chronological order -- as they once were -- and returns Stories from friends to the right-hand side of users’ screens.

Along with a bruised brand, Snap’s issues have impacted its bottom line. At the beginning of the month, the company reported first-quarter earnings and user stats failed to meet analyst expectations.

Since the fourth quarter 2017, revenue was down 19%, while daily active users increased by just 2%.

Along with seasonality, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel attributed the poor performance to Snapchat’s recent redesign, which separated content from a user’s friends and professional publishers.

“A change this big to existing behavior comes with some disruption,” Spiegel told analysts at the time."