This is the biggest redesign in Snapchat's history

Snap

Meet the new Snapchat.

• Snapchat's biggest redesign ever simplifies the app into three main windows and separates all communication with friends from being shown next to professionally produced content.
• A new Discover feed shows algorithmically sorted content from media partners and verified celebrities. Unlike Facebook, Snap employees will approve everything that appears in its content feed.
• The redesign will be made available to a small percentage of users later this week before rolling out to everyone early next week.

After years of aversion, Snapchat is embracing the feed.

The biggest redesign in the app's six-year history, announced Wednesday, features a new kind of algorithmically sorted feed that borrows ideas from the likes of Facebook and Netflix.

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Instead of showing posts from friends alongside content from professional publishers like Facebook, the new Snapchat separates all interactions with friends in a different section of the app to the left of the camera. That includes messaging threads and so-called "Stories" - photos and videos someone shares in chronological order that disappear in 24 hours.

In a move aimed at simplifying Snapchat's historically confusing design, the app is now divided into three main windows: all interactions with friends on the left, the camera in the center, and the Discover page on the right with an endless feed of content from media partners and public figures. Business Insider first reported details of the planned redesign earlier this month.

While once the darling app of the tech world, Snapchat has failed to meet Wall Street's growth expectations since going public earlier this year. And as Facebook has successfully copied some of Snapchat's core features in Instagram, parent company Snap Inc. is looking to this redesign as a way to kick-start lackluster growth and make its app more appealing to a wider user base.

Separating friends from publishers

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One of the main goals of Snapchat's redesign, which will be made available first to a small percentage of users later this week, was to lessen the confusion around the previous app's Stories page to the right of the camera. The page previously included Stories shared by friends alongside content from Discover, Snapchat's hub for media partners like The Daily Mail and BuzzFeed. Private messages threads with friends meanwhile existed to the left of the camera, two swipes away from the Stories they shared.

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How the old Snapchat worked.

The new window to the left of the camera will now only show message threads and Stories from friends. Unread messages from friends will be shown at the top of the window in chronological order while other message threads and Stories will be shown algorithmically based on who Snapchat believes you care about most. Snapchat will use signals like how often you communicate with certain users or view their Stories to determine the ranking.

Profile information, including your yellow QR "Snapcode," is visible above conversations with friends instead of in a separate window above the camera. Snapchat has reintroduced auto-playing Stories after it killed the feature last year. Snap Map, the feature that shows your friends' locations on a map, is still accessible by pinching out the camera view but will also be shown more in search and next to peoples' profiles.

A social media feed with no friends

Snap

During Snap's last earnings call with investors, CEO Evan Spiegel said that the planned redesign would address some of the "shortcomings" of feed-based social networks like Facebook or Twitter. By keeping friend-based communication separate from content created by professionals in the feed, Snap is trying to avoid what it sees as a pitfall of continually requiring users to add more friends to see more content.

The new Snapchat Discover page will feature a personalized feed of content from the app's more than 70 media partners along with Stories around breaking news events and specific locations, which are sourced from public videos shared by users and edited by humans at Snap.

Each feed will be ranked based on the user's historical viewing habits and the media brands they've chosen to subscribe to. The decision to approve which individuals and media partners make it into the feed is similar to Netflix's approach and further separates Snapchat from more open platforms like Facebook and YouTube.

With the redesign, Snapchat will also feature Stories shared by what it calls popular accounts. If a Snapchat user is starting to gain traction and grow his or her following, Snapchat's editors will look at the account and decide to feature it in the Discover feed.

A Snap spokesperson declined to explain exactly which factors would contribute to an account being featured, but did acknowledge that the decision was aimed at fostering the kinds of native internet celebrities that thrive on platforms like YouTube. Snapchat has historically ignored this class of power user to date.

Ways for individual creators to make money will be introduced in 2018. Popular accounts that Snap has vetted will also have detailed analytics for their public Stories for the first time.

An opportunity to better target

Besides the videos ads that already run between content on the Discover page now, the new feed will also include Snapchat's recently-introduced Promoted Stories. Advertisers will be able to buy slots in Discover from Snap's sales team that look similar to non-sponsored Story content from other publishers. Promoted Stories are shown to all Snapchat users now but could eventually be targeted to certain users and available through the company's self-service ad auction.

While a feed-based system is unproven with Snapchat's youthful user base, the redesign represents an opportunity for Snap to better target its ads at a time when investors question the business's ability to grow. CEO Evan Spiegel has historically been against the kind of highly targeted ads that have been Facebook and Google billions, but Snap has recently made an effort to make its ads more customizable and accessible.

The redesign will made available first to a small percentage of users later this week and then roll out more broadly early next week, according to a Snap spokesperson.

Get the latest Snap stock price here.