Is Snapchat over? These users were miffed even before celebrities like Rihanna blasted the app

Jefferson Graham | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Is Snapchat on the verge of disappearing act? Experts and many of the public wonder if Snapchat will be the next forgotten social media app. Jefferson Graham reports on #TalkingTech.

LOS ANGELES — Sean Gerberich used to frequent the Snapchat app to communicate with friends. But now he’s all about Instagram.

He didn’t like the app update at the end of last year, when Snap separated friends and featured content, such as Vice and NBC News shows, into two different buckets.

“It was harder to see my friends stuff, and I found them on Instagram,” the 18-year-old California State University Chico student said.

He's not alone. More than 1.25 million people signed a Change.org petition begging Snapchat to revert to its previous look. Over the weekend, supermodel Chrissy Teigen became the latest star ditching the messaging app, joining celebrities such as Kylie Jenner and Rihanna who have publicly turned on Snapchat.

Teigen tweeted that due to the update, her fans have a tough time finding her. Another beef: The short-lived ad on Snapchat that made light of a 2009 assault of singer Rihanna by her then-boyfriend Chris Brown.

In response to the ad for game "Would You Rather," Rihanna urged her fans to delete the app off their phone. Snap apologized twice for the ad, calling it "disgusting" and one that shouldn't have appeared on the service.

But the die may have been cast. Snap Inc.'s market value lost about $800 million on Rihanna's blast — which she made over Instagram, Snapchat's Facebook-owned rival.

And many users are either upset about the format change or simply have moved on.

Christina Peterson, 31, who works in cybersecurity in Tillamook, Ore., doesn't mince words when talking about Snapchat.

"It's dead," the former Snap user says.

Adds her friend, Issac Gonzales, 24, who sells shoes in Washington state: "It will be hard picking it up when you have someone as big as Rihanna telling you to close it."

Los Angeles-based Snap launched the redesign to make the app easier to navigate and understand, CEO Evan Spiegel said last year. He has defended the changes, recently noting that some users had felt like celebrities were their friends on Snapchat, but now they weren't anymore.

"And we’re like, ‘Exactly. They’re not your friend!' " Spiegel said at an investor's conference, according to Recode. "So for us, even some of the frustrations we’re seeing really validate those changes.”

Snap Inc. declined to comment for this article.

I stopped using snap. The update, the constant complaints of people not being able to find me, plus the Rihanna poll...no bueno — christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) March 24, 2018

Located in Venice Beach, close to the haunts of Hollywood's rich and famous, Snapchat had shunned the courting of celebrities that were part of the growth for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, aiming for a more realistic, of-the-moment experience.

Unlike Instagram, where celebrity's rankings in followers and likes are clearly labeled, Snapchat has kept that information private, though it recently adjusted its reporting tools to make it easier for so-called influencers to track the performance of their posts. But blasts from widely followed stars such as Jenner and Rihanna can still hurt.

Celebrities do bring "shine" to any brand, so having them on the app makes a difference, says Joshua Cohen, co-founder of Tubefilter, a blog that covers social media.

Cylus Young, 20, a college student from near Minneapolis, says he follows Justin Bieber, actor the Rock and singer Selena Gomez on Snapchat. "You want to stay up to date with what they’re doing, so it’s fun to check Snapchat and see what they’re up to."

Social media networks that rise to viral success, then flame out, inevitably draw comparisons to MySpace. No social network was hotter than when News Corp. swept in and acquired MySpace for $580 million in 2005. By 2011, having lost hundreds of millions of users to the then-new Facebook, MySpace was sold in a fire sale for $35 million, discarded again in 2016 and today barely exists.

“Snapchat is not MySpace,” insists Gene Munster, an analyst and investor with Loup Ventures. “It will still be around in five years.”

Snap — whose cofounders famously rebuffed a takeover offer from Mark Zuckerberg when it was in its infancy — is in a much different position than MySpace. For one, it's not losing users, and it still has a very loyal base — albeit one that's not growing as fast as analysts originally thought it would.

That's worrisome for investors, who know that Snap's advertising-driven business model hinges on user growth. In February, the stock surged after users rose 18% from the year-ago quarter.

The company "continues to have roughly 200 million daily users, which is significant," says Daniel Ives, analyst with GBH Insights. “Kylie and Rihanna was a setback, as was the user backlash, so this is a shaky period for Snap. But they’ll end up on the other side eventually.”

Snap went public a year ago, closing its first day of trading at $24.48 a share, with a valuation of $33 billion. At the time, Snap had 158 million active daily users; today it has 187 million. But its market cap has fallen to $20 billion, and the stock sells for less than the initial IPO price.

Rival Instagram, owned by Facebook, has more than 500 million daily users. And until a scandal over how Facebook allowed a developer to access the personal profiles of tens of millions of users — which were then sold to a political ad firm working for Donald Trump — it seemed unstoppable.

More: Bye Facebook, hello Instagram: Users make beeline for Facebook-owned social network

More: The FTC now investigating Facebook possible data misuse

The photo-focused app had cloned Snapchat's Stories feature in 2016, offering a 24-hour window on photos and videos for friends. In 2017, goosed by the Facebook marketing machine, the Stories feature really took off.

Set against the backdrop of Facebook's billion-plus daily user base, "it is hard for a platform that’s been ripped off by Instagram to compete," Munster says.

"There is value in what Snap is doing," Munster says, by focusing on young demographics. "It's just not going to be the moonshot many of us first thought."

Student Xavier Hernandez, 14, from Atchinson, Kan., says he's not giving up on Snapchat.

The app "enables me to access my friends easier than Instagram does," he says. Stylistically, he likes that he can send a quick photo (known as a "Snap") with some words on it, as opposed to having to add a caption and tags to an Instagram shot.

The same goes for Daniel Cevalos, 20, a student from Orlando.

"It’s still the primary mode of communication for me," Young says. "And it will be for a long time."

Follow USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham on Twitter, @jeffersongraham

