Snapchat users wanted a blast button and got disappearing Stories instead

In the early days of Snapchat, the same request came in over and over. Choosing friends one by one from a long list felt tedious, and users said they had an obvious fix. They wanted a send-all button to blast snaps to everyone. Evan Spiegel, the chief executive of Snapchat, paraphrased the plea in his own words, saying users wanted a button so they "can blast snaps to everybody all day long."

He was paying attention, but not through surveys, which he said are not particularly helpful. His way of listening was to sit with someone for an hour or two and talk through how technology fit into their life.

In those long conversations, Spiegel kept hearing a second complaint that sounded nothing like the first. People said social media felt permanent and pressured, full of likes, comments, and judgment, and they felt they could post only imperfect, pretty ordinary things. What Spiegel said he loved about Snapchat was that it allowed him to express himself and share with friends without that judgment and pressure.

That clash produced Stories. The team did not build the send-all button. It built a way to share with all friends at once, in Spiegel's words, "without spamming them all day long."

The design answered the complaints point by point. Stories removed public measures like likes and comments to reduce pressure. Posts disappeared after 24 hours so, as Spiegel put it, "everyone could start the day fresh again."

And they ran in chronological order, the way people have told stories since the beginning of time, instead of the backward feeds of the day that showed the end of a birthday party first, then the middle, then the start.

The idea did not arrive fully formed. It began as something closer to a status update, a way to know what friends were up to even when you were not trading snaps back and forth. Through more talking and revising, it became full-screen, vertical content that viewers could tap to move forward or backward, gestures that feel ordinary now but were new inventions then.

The lesson Spiegel took was simple. Listen closely for inspiration, empathize with what bothers people, and then do not always build exactly what they ask for.