Many new social media platforms have become increasingly popular in the last couple of months. While that means more options for us, it also brings in more competition for them. Some platforms like Snap are not doing so well amidst the fast-growing industry, although there are silver linings.
Snap is Recovering
Compared to last year's revenue, Snap has been falling short as it experienced its first revenue decline since it became a public company. Its first quarter saw a 7% decrease in revenue compared to the year prior. Based on the more recent earnings, the platform might be bouncing back.
In its second quarter, the parent company of Snap brought in $1.07 billion, which is higher than the first quarter, as mentioned in Tech Crunch, but compared to the year-over-year earnings, it's still lower than the company had hoped.
More signs that Snap is on its way to achieving its former glory include its increase in daily active users, which rose to 14% year-over-year. In total, Snap saw around 397 million active users every day in the second quarter.
The company may not be doing well, but it's not for the lack of trying. It has been competing with giants like Instagram and TikTok, and now Meta has also released its new app, Threads. Snap has launched a few new features to encourage or retain more users.
For one, the company announced that it will be offerings users a paid subscription option, which will grant them access to "exclusive, experimental, and pre-release features." Over four million have already subscribed to Snapchat+.
There's also Snap adding AI features in the app called "My AI," which was initially only available to premium subscribers. It has since been available to all users, although there was a period when everyone hated the addition.
'My AI' Might've Been a Step Backwards
It was easy to assume that users would appreciate an AI feature, especially since it has been all the rage in the tech world right now. However, Snap users did not appreciate the addition at all, mostly because it's pinned at the top of the chat feed.
As a way of expressing their disappointment with the AI feature, users took to app stores and flooded the review section with one-star ratings. Back then, it resulted in the app's rating dropping to 1.67 as 75% of the reviews were one-star, according to 9To5Mac.
To make it more annoying than it already is, Snap made it impossible for non-premium users to disable My AI, which means users are stuck with it. Only Snapchat+ members can toggle My AI off, which means you have to pay to remove the pinned feature.
Despite the backlash, Snap still has the My AI feature. The company also has not included a way for users who aren't subscribed to Snapchat+ to remove it. The best thing to do other than use it is to just ignore it. Although it's not such a bad idea to give the AI chatbot a chance.
