Snap Share Prices Skyrocket Following App Redesign

After an excellent IPO, Snap Inc., the owner of Snapchat has been struggling to prove that it can grow its users as investors expected. Thanks to a recent redesign of the app, the company was finally able to make some headway in this pursuit. User growth surged and as a result, Snap’s share prices also saw a similar upward trajectory.

Snap’s shares skyrocketed a staggering 35 percent on Wednesday after reporting that it was seeing substantial user growth following the redesign, Reuters reports. This pushed the stocks past the $17 per share that the company had during its IPO and now, several Wall Street analysts are already raising their predictions of the company’s prospects.

A lot of this growth is due to the fixes that Snap implemented in the Android version of its app, which has led to increased retention. Now, more people are either signing up for the first time or are coming back to the service and the redesign isn’t available to all users yet.

The platform’s advertising system has also seen some positive momentum, with the auction-based setup making buying ads on Snapchat a snap. This is doesn’t mean that everything is now going to be sunshine and rainbows, however.

Some users are actually angry at the new design, with many asking how they can go back to the old version of the app, Metro reports. Snap did mention to users before the update was launched that the changes might take some getting used to. Based on the social media rants that many users have been posting, however, there are a lot of them that are not willing to give it a chance.

Snap also has to contend with its biggest competition in the form of Instagram, which seems hell-bent on making sure that the selfie-sharing app gets buried and forgotten. The Facebook-owned app has copied what made Snapchat so popular and is intent on outcompeting it in every respect.