Snapchat botches facelift in latest app update

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Garrett Kluever, Biz & Tech Editor

Snapchat, the social media platform popular with millennials and their younger counterparts, has received harsh criticism after rolling out a new update at the beginning of February.

The biggest shift on the application amongst other changes was combining the ‘conversations’ and snapchat stories from friends into one ‘friends’ page.

To put it frankly, many users are unhappy with the update and are expressing their disapproval. Freshman physical education major Eric Einerson discusses how he has trouble finding people’s stories that he wants to see.

“Someone I may not talk to as much now shows up more recently than someone who I talk to a lot more frequently, which makes it hard to keep up,” Einerson said.

The page previously used for stories showed your friends’ most recent posts and then below it showcased different subscriptions from companies and posts from celebrities and events. Now that page is only used for the subscription and posts/events from celebrities that Snapchat deems important.

With friends’ stories and conversations now combined, freshman elementary education major Lyndsay Kranz expressed her distaste.

“I hate how the stories pop up in the feed. It’s a weird format that’s hard to understand,” Kranz said.

A current petition to repeal the Snapchat update on Change.org has gathered more than 1,143,000 supporters since the company rolled out the changes.

Sophomore Matthew Backus dislikes the changes but assumes everyone will eventually adjust.

“I’ll still use it though, it’s one of those things we’ll all get used to,” Backus said.

Einerson echoed his statements about users potentially being complacent about the update.

“We will complain but people will adjust and then find something else to complain about,” Einerson said.

Because of the backlash, many people have posted on various social media sites ways to reverse the update.

But the Snapchat Support Twitter account put out a tweet saying there is no way to revert the update.

“Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet — unofficial workarounds to change the way Snapchat looks are temporary and can result in getting permanently locked out of your account or lost Memories,” said the official support account.

While others remain unhappy and the petition grows, freshman journalism major Samantha Butzen proposed a better alternative.

“I think it’s so bad, emailing is a better option now,” Butzen said.