I will never understand the desire to radically change an interface on any product <10 years old. Especially Snap's, as I don't remember anyone complaining about the interface. Instead, why not make your app use less battery power and improve the camera's functionality? Those types of improvement are universally appreciated, yet the least likely to be implemented.
Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled
11–20 of 79 posts
Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled
#12I will never understand the desire to radically change an interface on any product <10 years old. Especially Snap's, as I don't remember anyone complaining about the interface. Instead, why not make your app use less battery power and improve the camera's functionality? Those types of improvement are universally appreciated, yet the least likely to be implemented.
> Especially Snap's, as I don't remember anyone complaining about the interface.
Surely you’re joking? I make software for a living and I was utterly and completely lost in Snapchat. Easily the most confusing software I’ve used in a long time.
Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled
#13Here's the money quote:
> Nearly all senior executives who worked with him before the IPO are gone, and more than 10 senior employees have departed in the past year.
If you want to retain good people, you need to give them real input and control.
Senior managers were trying to prevent a disaster and Spiegel did not listen to them -- but even if every decision he made had turned out to be correct, his leadership style still would have alienated many of them to the point they would have wanted to leave. These are successful people who have no problem finding other opportunities.
Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled
#14I will never understand the desire to radically change an interface on any product <10 years old. Especially Snap's, as I don't remember anyone complaining about the interface. Instead, why not make your app use less battery power and improve the camera's functionality? Those types of improvement are universally appreciated, yet the least likely to be implemented.
Snap, and also Twitter, are in a bit of a bind. They can't change anything without alienating some of their most passionate users, but if they change nothing they will stagnate and cede all of the possible benefits of innovation to their competitors. A company that lets its competitors come up with all the new ideas is probably not going to survive very long.
It's understandable that Snap wanted to improve its design. On principle there is nothing wrong with that, but that's not what they actually did because the CEO ignored a lot of warnings that the changes were not improvements.
Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
They deliberately give you a bad quality photo and I don't know why. Snapchat takes a screenshot. It doesn't use the camera API on your phone as it should. So it doesn't get any of the processing which is integral to taking good photos on phones. Apple should reject it from the App Store for doing this, but for some reason they let them do it, as well as Instagram and Facebook.
Well it's almost certainly going to be faster (thumb to save latency) to run the camera in video mode and then snatch a frame when the user hits the button than the normal preview-stillshot way the phone takes pics natively. Cell phone OEMs differentiate with camera quality and so some run some pretty heavy post processing to make images come out okay. Snap probably cares more about quickly taking picture and the fil…
But, quite frankly, using the native API’s has not been that difficult for me as a solo coder who is writing an iOS video camera app on the side.
If they have so many resources, a decision like this is baffling.
Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled
#16I will never understand the desire to radically change an interface on any product <10 years old. Especially Snap's, as I don't remember anyone complaining about the interface. Instead, why not make your app use less battery power and improve the camera's functionality? Those types of improvement are universally appreciated, yet the least likely to be implemented.
Snap, and also Twitter, are in a bit of a bind. They can't change anything without alienating some of their most passionate users, but if they change nothing they will stagnate and cede all of the possible benefits of innovation to their competitors. A company that lets its competitors come up with all the new ideas is probably not going to survive very long. It's understandable that Snap wanted to improve its design…
> A company that lets its competitors come up with all the new ideas is probably not going to survive very long.
They can just acquire those companies, which is the strategy used by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other giants that are moving faster than startups now by deploying capital faster and better than ever before.
Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled
#17Really wonder if articles like these are produced by people shorting the stock. I think the guy is a genius but he made a very bad mistake with the redesign and is clearly paying for it. There were some very interesting people producing content for entrepreneurs on there but they're all gone for now. I've gone from daily to monthly use. But I keep checking in because I'm really convinced that they can still pull a ra…
> Really wonder if articles like these are produced by people shorting the stock.
Everything is about money, so I always assume that to be the case for all these kinds of articles. Regardless, I’m pretty sure snap will be gone in a couple years. No way they can stand up to Facebook imo.
Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled
#18I will never understand the desire to radically change an interface on any product <10 years old. Especially Snap's, as I don't remember anyone complaining about the interface. Instead, why not make your app use less battery power and improve the camera's functionality? Those types of improvement are universally appreciated, yet the least likely to be implemented.
Snap, and also Twitter, are in a bit of a bind. They can't change anything without alienating some of their most passionate users, but if they change nothing they will stagnate and cede all of the possible benefits of innovation to their competitors. A company that lets its competitors come up with all the new ideas is probably not going to survive very long. It's understandable that Snap wanted to improve its design…
pretty sure the design changes were to monetize it, not improve it.
Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Snap, and also Twitter, are in a bit of a bind. They can't change anything without alienating some of their most passionate users, but if they change nothing they will stagnate and cede all of the possible benefits of innovation to their competitors. A company that lets its competitors come up with all the new ideas is probably not going to survive very long. It's understandable that Snap wanted to improve its design…
pretty sure the design changes were to monetize it, not improve it.
All of snapchat's changes felt like a game transitioning from paid to free to play. similar levels of confusion and forum visits required to navigate the UX changes and how i would now "pay" by viewing ads to view the content i had before.
Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled
#20I will never understand the desire to radically change an interface on any product <10 years old. Especially Snap's, as I don't remember anyone complaining about the interface. Instead, why not make your app use less battery power and improve the camera's functionality? Those types of improvement are universally appreciated, yet the least likely to be implemented.
Snap, and also Twitter, are in a bit of a bind. They can't change anything without alienating some of their most passionate users, but if they change nothing they will stagnate and cede all of the possible benefits of innovation to their competitors. A company that lets its competitors come up with all the new ideas is probably not going to survive very long. It's understandable that Snap wanted to improve its design…
Twitter’s problems aren’t confusing: fix the abuse problem and add an edit button.