Spencer Pratt Is the Latest Celebrity Casualty for Faltering Snapchat
Why the crystal daddy is moving to Instagram.
Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel refused to answer questions in a conference call with investment analysts this week about how many users Snapchat has lost after its much-maligned redesign. Even Snapchat’s high-profile users — an increasingly important segment for the youth-focused app — seem to be leaving. The latest big-name departure? Reality TV schlub–turned–crystal pusher Spencer Pratt.
On Wednesday, Pratt unexpectedly deleted the platform on which he’d built up an impressive following and even been voted Snapchatter of the Year by the Shorty Awards. Known for documenting the most mundane parts of his eccentric daily life with surprising sincerity, Pratt became known for his penchant for hummingbirds, hawking his crystal wares, and his espresso machine.
Why did Spencer Pratt delete Snapchat? It’s unclear — the former Us Weekly favorite didn’t return our request for comment. But on Twitter, Pratt implied Snapchat’s algorithms were to blame; he tweeted Wednesday that users were missing his content.
Pratt is very publicly taking his content — and probably his following — over to Instagram.
Your move, Snapchat. Pratt is just the latest example of celebs turning on the popular chat platform. In March, Rihanna railed against the app when a third-party ad asked Snapchat users if they would rather “slap Rihanna” or “punch Chris Brown.” After media reports about the ad surfaced, Rihanna posted an Instagram story saying, “All the women, children, and men that have been victims of [domestic violence] in the past and especially the ones who haven’t made it out yet … you let us down!” Following that, Snap stocks plunged, suffering a market value loss of $800 million.
Chrissy Teigen, one of Twitter’s most active celebrity users, also called out the app following its redesign.
On Tuesday, Spiegel told Wall Street analysts that Snap planned to revamp its redesign to appease users. “We are now focused on optimizing the redesign based on our ongoing experimentation and learning. For example, when we separated friends’ Stories from creator Stories, we also moved them to the left side of the camera and merged them into the Chat feed,” he said. “We learned that combining watching Stories and communicating with friends into the same place made it harder to optimize for both competing behaviors. We are currently rolling out an update to address this.”
When the update will occur, and how users will feel about it, remains to be seen.
