Snapchat’s redesign has been controversial, to say the least. A few months ago, the popular social media app made headlines after throwing users for a loop with its decision to show Stories in an algorithmically sorted feed, rather than chronological order. It appears that Snapchat is now listening to its users’ grievances, and is rolling back the redesign (at least for some users) and instead showing Snapchat Stories in reverse chronological order once again.
When Snapchat first offered up its new look, its CEO Evan Spiegel wrote in, “We are separating the social from the media, and taking an important step forward towards strengthening our relationships with our friends and our relationships with the media.” The idea was that Snapchat would offer its user base more personalized content. That idea, while well conceived, was not particularly well received by everyone.
Snapchat is now taking things back a bit. As originally reported by Techcrunch, some folks are now seeing the reverse chronological ordering of Stories both in the version of the app where there are separate Stories and Chat tabs, as well as the design where there is only Stories and All tabs.
The issue with reverse chronological ordering is that it automatically gives the advantage to users who are frequent Snapchat users. And the benefit to algorithmic sorting is that it has historically helped with social media platforms’ growth. For example, both Instagram and Twitter implemented this sorting technique, and Instagram has been touting that it has eclipsed Snapchat in terms of popularity among users. Indeed, after Snapchat implemented algorithmic sorting, the social media platform saw growth numbers increase.
Still, keeping the people satisfied is doubtless the priority when it comes to any platform’s strategy, and as Techcrunch noted, this most recent update seems to be extremely popular among users. But as most popular social media apps know, satisfying everyone for an extended period of time is nigh impossible, so soon, Snapchat may have to reconsider once again the way that it displays its stories. Until then, enjoy your reverse chronological feed – you never know how long you may have it.
