Snap confirms it's testing a redesign that puts user-generated Stories back alongside content from celebrities and others in Discover page
User Stories are headed to the Discover page as part of a new test, which raises a number of questions about Snap's recent redesign.
Context & Ripple Effects
The December 2017 redesign drew a hard line through Snapchat: friend-based communication on the left, all crowdsourced, partner, and celebrity Stories on the right, with ad-supported Discover — launched back in 2015 — anchoring the professional side. Earlier this month Snap already began rolling some of it back, letting users see a reverse chronological Stories feed in tabs.
This test goes further: instead of just reordering friend content, it moves user-generated Stories onto the Discover page itself, mixing them with celebrity and publisher content. That collapses the very separation the redesign was built around, and signals Snap treating the friend/professional split as a failed experiment rather than a foundation.
First-order effects
- Users whose Stories were demoted behind the friends/Discover wall regain placement next to celebrity and publisher content, directly changing who sees their posts.
- Snap's Discover page — its ad-supported showcase since 2015 — gains user-generated inventory alongside paid partner content in the test cohort.
Second-order effects
- Celebrities and publishers on Discover now compete for attention against users' own friends inside the same surface, pressuring the economics of premium Discover placements.
- Advertisers buying Discover slots face a blended feed where professional content no longer owns the shelf, complicating the guaranteed-context pitch for that inventory.
Third-order effects
- If the test sticks, Snap completes a multi-step unwind of the 2017 structure — reverse-chronological tabs first, merged surfaces second — and the app's information architecture reverts toward one continuous stream of content regardless of source.
- A pattern of high-profile reversals on a flagship redesign makes future Snap layout changes harder to defend internally and externally, pushing the company toward incremental tests over big-bang relaunches.
The trend: Snap is progressively dismantling the friend-versus-professional content split at the heart of its 2017 redesign, testing whether a single mixed surface can serve users, creators, and advertisers at once.