The Verge: Snapchat Introduces a Redesigned App that Separates Your Friends from Brands

On Wednesday, Snapchat rolled out a redesign that creates a distinct line between friends and brands. According to The Verge, the social media app is now going to push professionally produced content into a separate feed and offer a new friends page that brings stories and individual chats together.

The update is coming at a time when Snapchat is under pressure to add more users to its network. The idea behind the change is to create more interaction between friends—for the first time, Snapchat will now push items from users’ closet friends to the top of their feed. The other side of the app will then house all content from professional brands. Snapchat is drawing the line between the two through follows—if an account follows a user back, it will be considered a friend. If not, it’s labeled as a brand. If it doesn’t follow you back, then it’s content appears on its Discover page.

“Until now, social media has always mixed photos and videos from your friends with content from publishers and creators,” said Snapchat in a blog post. “While blurring the lines between professional content creators and your friends has been an interesting internet experiment, it has also produced some strange side-effects (like fake news) and made us feel like we have to perform for our friends rather than just express ourselves.”

Snapchat’s new redesign will begin to appear for a small group of users this week, and is expected to be introduced more broadly over the course of the next few weeks.

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