I liked Snapchat, but I don't like stories. To me, the beauty of Snapchat was that I could share a funny moment with a couple of friends who I thought would find the same thing amusing. I can't do that with stories. It's like being forced to tell a in-joke to all of my friends at the same time. I'd rather just not tell the joke at all.

You can have a "Close friends" list or multiple accounts. Neither is particularly UX-ergonomic, but that's what people do to address that need

The fact that they succeeded in spite of a purposefully obtuse interface is a pretty clear validation for the concept.

I think the general belief was that the concept was a thing for "kids"/"young people", but now I'm very convinced that that was because of Snap's branding + general incomprehensibility.

Did they really succeed though?

They succeeded enough to scare zucc into war mode.

Snapchat's main problem was the default screen was full of tabloid magazines from a grocery store checkout aisle.