Ask any friend or colleague of mine, and they’ll tell you I’m a big fan of Snapchat. So it’s no surprise that I’ve taken interest in two recent updates to the image messaging app. Today, Snapchat unveiled one update I am a big fan of, and another that I question.

The update I love is the complete overhaul of the chat portion of the platform dubbed Chat 2.0. With Chat 2.0 users can now easily skip between video, audio, making a call, texting, sending photos, drawing, sending stickers and even leaving audio messages all in a singular chat interaction.

With messenger platforms like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp continuing to see rapid growth, this major update was an attempt to keep Snapchat users on the platform by now providing the chat options available on other messenger platforms within a Snapchat conversation. The fun layout of the interface should be a natural fit with the Snapchat target customer and help the platform continue to be the go to platform for fun conversations.

Chat 2.0 updates include:

• Video and audio calls: Much like a phone, users can join, ignore or watch using audio calling.
• Video notes: For a better reaction, users can record 10 second GIF-style thumbnail messages.
• Audio notes: If there’s no time to type, users can send a quick voice snippet.
• Photos: Now send multiple photos at a time via chat
• Stickers: With a library of more than 200 new stickers, tack some more personality into your conversations.

Now to the update I do not care for – auto-advance Stories. This feature causes the Snapchat Stories to play automatically in a user’s feed, one after another. Users have the ability to skip to the next story or exit back to the feed, but I personally like to view the stories in the order and at the time I like. This is a win for Snapchat as it will boost view counts. However, from a UX standpoint, I do not think it will be well received initially.

More info from today’s update from Snapchat is available here.

Tell us what you think of the updates!