When Will Snap Embrace Data?

When Snap employees pitch CEO Evan Spiegel on a new feature for the app, they’ve found he’s more likely to pay attention if they emphasize how they think users will feel about the feature than if they cite data about users’ likely response, says a former employee.

It’s essentially the opposite at Facebook. That company’s reliance on data-driven analysis is so strong that it famously runs tests on small portions of users when it wants to change even the most subtle feature in its News Feed. That includes a lot of A/B testing—tracking user response to different versions of a new feature.