Saving Snapchat: A Case Study (Part 1)

This is the new statement on Snapcha — I mean Snap Inc.’s — website. Snap created quite a buzz when it started advertising themselves as a camera company. You might be asking yourself: when did they do that, isn’t Snapchat just a place to send risqué photos? Actually, it’s evolved quite a bit since the app first entered the market as a platform to send those NSFW pictures. Once people realized they were able to take screenshots, I think that fad died very quickly. However, Snapchat continued to grow like no other and blazed its path to becoming one of the most promising startups. That growth, unfortunately, has evolved into a rather alarming decline since it’s gone public.

With recent news articles with headlines like “RIP: Snapchat is officially a ‘dying’ social media platform” or “Instagram Stories is stealing Snapchat’s users,” it’s no wonder why Snapchat’s stakeholders are becoming increasingly alarmed.

Personally, I love Snapchat. I use it to send unflattering selfies to my closest friends, and to see what my friends are up to. Plus, who DOESN’T enjoy the filters? But I’ve also noticed that I have also started switching over to Instagram stories. Snapchat has always been my go-to, but I realized that most of its users might not feel the same way anymore. And this lingering question is what led me to choosing to do a case study on Snapchat for my final UX/UI project at Ironhack.

So, now what? I had my work cut out for me, so I decided to start at the basics. Let’s go back to Snap’s mission statement, shall we?

“Snap Inc. is a camera company”

Honestly, I’m not sure exactly they mean by this. Mostly because when I search “most used camera apps” on Google, apps such as VSCOCAM, InstaSize, and Pixlr, show up. Likewise, searching “most used camera companies” gives you camera brands such as Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc. So clearly, there’s already a difference in what the societal mental model of a camera company is, and what Snap wants its users to think a camera company is. Or maybe, they’re trying to redefine what it means to be a camera company and set new boundaries. Either way, Snap will need to follow through on the idea that it’s a “camera company”, not just an app or social network, if they want to brand themselves this way.

The vast majority of Snap’s revenue comes from advertising on Snapchat, and yet they make it extremely difficult for influencers and brands to market through their platform. Additionally, Snap still isn’t profitable with the advertising that they get. Mediakix reports that Snap lost $514.6 million in 2016, and it faces significant obstacles on the path to profitability. Snapchat saw an average of 158 million daily active users by the end of Q4, a relatively modest gain over Q3’s reported 153 million, and though that user base is very engaged and provides a significant audience for influencers and advertisers, Instagram has 400 million daily active users to Snapchat’s 158 million. If Snap is going to become a company that stays in the market, it’ll need to become profitable and withhold its investors — something that’ll require continued growth in its user base and a clear commitment from the influencers and brands that are key to its success.

“We believe that reinventing the camera represents our greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate.”

I’m assuming that by “reinventing the camera,” they’re referring to Spectacles, a pair of glasses that takes photos and videos for the user. Spectacles made a big splash mostly due its camera with a 115-degree lens, designed to mimic how humans actually see (to see them in action, click here). When they first launched, the marketing team at Snap was very smart in creating a lot of hype around the vending machines that had a limited number of the glasses in specific locations.

That novelty quickly wore off once they made the glasses available online (you can now buy them on Amazon). As Motley Fool analyst Dylan Lewis said: “There’s a big difference between building buzz and being a viable product segment.” But now that they’re available with One-Click ordering? The initial peak in consumers’ interests took a nosedive. All in all, Spectacles doesn’t give enough foundation for Snap to call itself a camera company. And for a company who brands themselves as such, it’s ironic that one of the main complaints from users is that the Snapchat camera is too laggy. Spectacles certainly has its work cut out for it to catch up to, let alone surpass, Apple and Samsung’s advanced smartphone cameras.

So now we continue to the next part, where Snap believes that reinventing the camera represents our greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate. If they’re so set on improving these aspects of people’s behaviors, they need to start at the core of it all: user needs.

Snapchat is notorious in the design community for ignoring all the traditional user design principles and forging their own path. Dubiously, it’s worked for them thus far, much to the dismay of the entire design community. However, it’s now gotten to the point where users are discouraged from the onset of the onboarding process — to the point where they give up while setting up an account. I think it’s quite hard to improve the way people live and communicate through your app, if users can’t even figure out how to onboard or use your app. A few years ago, Snapchat was hailed as the pioneer of design for social media — but now, that same breakthrough design is stagnating their growth and endangering them of becoming obsolete. It will need to continue adding users, and coax them to spend more time on the service. That will mean winning over users over 25, who are not as familiar with the way the service works. The app’s gestures are not intuitive, and it can be hard to figure out what to do with it.

“Our products empower people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together.”

Snapchat formed its own unique brand of social media, where the phone is used as a brief little diary of a user’s life. The personal phone became the personal lens into a personal perspective of a life that doesn’t get shown anywhere else. Despite having little competition in this field, Spectacles upped their own game by giving people a new, even more intimate and personal lens to look through. They essentially disrupted their own industry.

Don’t get me wrong — this article might make it seem as if I hate Snapchat and think it will become outdated, but it’s quite the opposite. I want Snapchat to prevail. Snapchat broke the boundaries of social media by letting people express themselves in ways that weren’t “picture perfect.”

While Instagram might be reserved for the perfectly edited and refined photos of you relaxing on a beach in Aruba, Snapchat is for capturing the moment when you try wakeboarding for the first time and end up nosediving. On Snapchat, there is no incentive to get followers or build an overly curated persona. Adding someone on Snapchat requires much more thought and care (do you really want this person to see all your snaps of you in face masks and pimple cream?) whereas on Instagram, following someone doesn’t require much thought since it’s not a big deal if you don’t know the person. People use Snapchat because it has created a platform for low-obligation communication. That’s a beautiful thing in times like today, where there are so many societal pressures to be the perfect version of yourself at all times.

However, their success going forward is going to have to depend on them reworking some of their business and user goals. They definitely need to increase their user base to catch up to the likes of Instagram and Facebook, as well as draw more influencers and brands to market through their platform. As I continue my research, I’m curious to see if it’s feasible for Snapchat to survive as a “camera company” or if they’ll have to join the ranks of other social media companies and fight their way through the competition.

If you want to be a part of this study and provide some further insight into what Snapchat’s users need, fill out this survey!

Edit (7/30/2017): Part 2 of this study is now published! Click here to read it.