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More than 1.2m Snapchat users have signed a petition urging the company to reverse its “annoying” redesign – but it was a single tweet from Kylie Jenner that may have caused real damage.
After the celebrity tweeted “sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me” to her 24m followers, shares of the app’s parent company Snap plummeted 6% and launched a fresh cycle of embarrassing headlines.
But some analysts said this was more than just a one-day PR disaster. Facing backlash from brands and influencers and ongoing competition from Facebook and newer apps like Musical.ly, another platform hugely popular among children, Snapchat is suffering from a larger existential crisis, and it’s unclear how it will recover.
“We’re watching a company explode into bits,” said Eric Schiffer, CEO of private equity firm Patriarch Organization, arguing that the redesign scandal was the “greatest app debacle” he had ever seen in Silicon Valley: “This is a kiss of death to a brand like Snapchat with their base that has stuck with them.”
Snap has recently suffered steep losses as Instagram, owned by Facebook, has attracted hundreds of millions of users to its Stories feature, which functions like Snapchat.
