The high cost of the Snapchat redesign.

Connor James Ibbetson, Editor-at-large

A disaster for SnapChat

Earlier this year, we reported on the now infamous Snapchat update that drew the ire of Snapchat users across the world.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel was more than likely disappointed in the redesign, which aimed to refresh the way advertising worked on the social media platform.

Instead however, the redesign caused outrage among the apps regular users, and saw 1.2 million people around the world sign a petition to stop the changes.

Despite the backlash, Snap Inc tuck to their guns and followed through with their changes, and now the true cost has been revealed.

Snap Inc reports for the second quarter

Speaking in a prepared statement discussing the companies second quarter, Spiegel revealed that since the controversial update, SnapChat had lost 2% of its daily users.

The loss of 2% represents a fall from 191 million users to around 188 million, in just quarter.

The loss of daily users isn’t good news for the app or their investors, with stock prices hitting a record low in June this year.

The loss of daily users is likely made worse due to consumers moving to Instagram, who introduced a host of features to their photo sharing app similar to that of SnapChat – including daily stories and disappearing photo messages.

Celebrities which once bolstered the platform also seem to be moving on, in February of this year Kylie Jenner declared Snapchat ‘dead’ causing stock to plummet.

sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.

— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 21, 2018

Spiegel remained positive about the redesign, “with the updated redesign, we’ve been able to combine the strength of our close-friend network that brings people to Snapchat every day with an infinite scroll of personalized content.”

The CEO went on to cite increased monthly active users despite the drop in daily users “while our Monthly Active Users continued to grow this quarter, we saw a 2 percent decline in our Daily Active Users.”

The Snap Inc CEO was also upbeat about the companies smart glasses, called Spectacles “When combined with our efforts in augmented reality, we believe Spectacles represent an exciting opportunity as we build towards a future where computing is overlaid on the world.”

Despite the fall in Daily Active Users, the company does have reason to celebrate, with profits up 44% year-on-year. Trailing twelve month revenue was $987 million, up 58 percent year-over-year.