Sorry, But Snapchat Is Not Bringing Back the Old Design
If early reviews are any indication, Snap’s decision to overhaul its messaging app may have backfired with its key teen demographic.
And Daily Beast reporter Taylor Lorenz says the changes may not bring in enough “older” users over the age of 25 to make up the difference.
“It’s going to have to provide a more compelling use case for them,” she told Cheddar. “Older users are not looking to chat on it. A lot of them use other chat platforms -- Stories has been taken over by Instagram.”
Snap has seen backlash from younger users over a complete redesign that was rolled out globally last week. When announcing the new look, CEO Evan Spiegel said the changes separate the platform from the rest of social media and strengthen its relationship with users and the media.
Lorenz says that could mean the app becomes more of news destination, but whether the strategy pays off remains to be seen.
“They’re hoping to have 10 thousand tiles on the right hand side, so that’s a big opportunity to sell ad inventory. But I think they’re going to need to come up with more unique products, and I think they’re going to have a really hard time competing with Facebook and Instagram who have so much data.”
And for those hoping the company will revert to its old design, Lorenz says not to hold their breath.
“There is less than a zero chance, I’m so sorry to all the youngsters out there. There’s no going back, unfortunately, for them.”
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/snapchats-teen-revolt).
While it was a volatile week in tech as Meta experienced the biggest one-day drop in the history of the U.S. stock market, industry giant Amazon reported 40 percent growth — largely on the strength of the cloud. Dan Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, joined Cheddar News to break down how the e-commerce company stock managed to pop despite headwinds against its core retail business. "It's all about cloud because of sum of the parts, you could argue, amazon could be $3,500/$4,000 stock just based on cloud," he said. Ives also addressed the apparent the differing impact of Apple iOS changes on Facebook and Snapchat.
Following Ford's earnings miss, the stock price dropped despite a bullish outlook from the auto giant. Karl Brauer, an executive analyst with ISeeCars.com, joined Cheddar to break down why investors may not be sold on the carmaker because of the ongoing factor of supply constraints. "The product is not an issue. There's really good product coming from them, including the electric vehicle side, and the demand is not an issue. There's plenty of demand, but nobody really has a solid grasp on when we're going to get past the supply chain issue," said Brauer.
Image-sharing app Pinterest reported big beats on its Q4 earnings for the top and bottom lines. The social platform surprised investors after seeing a decline in users while earnings and revenue were much higher than expected.
The Labor Department's January jobs report showed 467,000 jobs were added, compared to the 150,000 that were projected, a sign that employment is continuign to return to pre-pandemic levels. Lindsey Piegza, chief economist at investment bank Stifel, joined Cheddar to break down the report, noting the big gains but adding a note of caution. "Remember, even with this morning's stellar report, we're still millions below that level that we had reached prior to the onset of COVID-19," she said." Yes, we are recapturing jobs. We still have further ground that needs to be made before we can talk about reaching that previous peak." Piegza also discussed the role of the Federal Reserve going forward as the employment figures turn more positive.
