Snap is the new stubborn, slow-growing Twitter

Twitter fell apart in 2013 when its growth slowed signficantly in the face of competition and copying from Facebook, and users found it too hard to find the best content due to its unsorted reverse chronological feed. Its share price fell 18 percent a quarter later as the growth troubles continued.

Snapchat fell apart today when its growth slowed significantly in the face of competition from Facebook, and users found it too hard to find the best content due to its unsorted reverse chronological feed.. Its share price fell 24% as its growth troubles continued.

4 years later, Twitter is finally growing again because it accepted that it had to abandon one of its core product characteristics, the unfiltered feed. Twitter finally moved to an algorithmically-ordered feed that surfaced the best content at the top from the people you care about most. In Q1 2017, it posted its first big growth in years, adding 9 million users.

Now it’s time for Snapchat and CEO Evan Spiegel to learn from history. Snap’s anti-Facebook philosophy has helped it develop disappearing messages and the Stories format by discarding the permanence of Facebook’s email-esque messaging and profile timeline. But now the unsorted Stories list is causing people’s best friends to get lost amongst the acquaintances and celebrities they follow.

While adding extra creative tools like yesterday’s Magic Eraser and the recent 3D augmented reality World Lenses are nice, they don’t make Twitter fundamentally more easy or useful for more people. Snapchat may need to be willing to challenge some of its most deeply-held product philosophies to become attractive to all teens around the globe or a wider range of demographics.