Snapchat has pledged to bring social media back to what really matters: friends.

In a video to snapchatters and shareholders, the company said it wanted to diverge the social aspect of your friends' content from the media/news sources currently mixed in. "Until now, social media has always mixed photos and videos from your friends with content from publishers and creators," the video states.

Upon launch, the camera app will open, like it normally does. After that, users can swipe to the left to visit friend content such as Snapchat Stories and Conversations. To the right of the camera will be reserved for publishing content, under the "discover" umbrella.

Snapchat labelled "fake news" as a driving force for redesign. "While blurring the lines between professional content creators and your friends has been an interesting Internet experiment, it has also produced some strange side-effects (like fake news) and made us feel like we have to perform for our friends rather than just express ourselves."

"The new snapchat seperates the social from the media. This means that the Chats and Stories from your friends are on the left side of Snapchat, and the Stories from publishers, creators and the community are on the right."

Snap (Snapchat's parent company) is braced for short-term pain when the update rolls out, but is confident the changes are for the better long-term. "There is a strong likelihood that the redesign of our application will be disruptive to our business in the short term, " it said earlier this month. "And we don't yet know how the behaviour of our community will change when they begin to use our updated application. We're willing to take that risk for what we believe are substantial long-term benefits to our business."

Twitter recently boosted its character limit from 140 characters to 280, in a bid to shake up the platform. Both Snapchat and Twitter have been struggling to attract new users in the past few months.

The update will be rolled out in the coming weeks.

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