Nick Amon-

 

In the spring of 2011, three Stanford students created a class project app that is now valued at upwards of $20 billion. What we’ve all come to know as Snapchat at one point in time was a simple project originally named “Pickaboo.”

 

Students at Stanford University reconciled in the idea of an app that allowed for impermanent picture messaging. 15 different languages and nations later, the rest of the world was soon to follow suit.

 

Fast forwarding to late January 2015, Snapchat issued an update to their app that seemed to expand its ever-expanding popularity into a new realm. As Snapchat users, we’re now able to view the Snapchat stories of major news organizations and television networks like CNN, VICE, ESPN and Comedy Central.

 

This new option given to Snapchat users worldwide is not only an effort by Snapchat to increase their connectivity to numerous media and entertainment outlets, but to draw more attention to the app itself and gain new potential Snapchatters.

 

Unfortunately as some users of this beloved app enjoyed the New Year’s update, others were not so enthusiastic about it. This is because within the expansion of the app’s new social outreach, other features in the app have been removed. Abilities such as seeing a friend’s score within the app, or more importantly seeing a friend’s “best friend list,” are all gone.

 

Many users are upset with these minute changes primarily since now they’re unable to constantly check their friend’s or significant other’s list of whom they snap the most. As feasible and childish as these woes may be, they’ve sparked enough talk amongst the cyberspace that Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel decided to speak on the manner by explaining the feature’s removal were because, “a few higher-profile friends wanted to keep their usernames private.”

 

Luckily, avid users shouldn’t be upset for long as Spiegel also promised that the features will soon return to the app, just in a different manner and format. Not all users took this update business to heart, as avid Snapchat user and junior Zach Fisher even agreed, “Am I personally upset that the features are gone? No. At the end of the day it’s just fun and social media.”

 

When talking about the other components of the update, Fisher said, “I’m a huge fan of innovation, and I find the new update to be amazing.”

 

When asked how she felt towards the update and the controversy surrounding it, Junior Haley Poll said, “People need to start growing up and stop determining their best friends based off of social media.”

 

Unfortunately, some would disagree with Poll, and are simply unable to fathom any other usage of Snapchat besides sending six second snaps to “bae.”

 

So to those who find themselves more concerned of not being able to “creep” on their significant other anymore, than taking advantage of being able to now connect to a plethora of entertainment and news outlets, to be honest your struggle is hysterical at most.

 

Sadly enough, if you find it a problem of yours to not keep tabs on all of your friends through social media at every stall moment of the day, then you may just have a complete larger problem altogether.

 

There’s a reason why Myspace and your top eight don’t matter or even exist anymore, so let’s try not to go back to those days. Agreed?