19 Comments

In Defense Of Snap Previews

Jan 30, 2007
by

Nick Wilson of Performancing and Robert Scoble are a bit cranky these days. First Nick says that Snap Previews is “ruining your readership” and the Scobleizer follows suit. I dunno fellas, I kinda like the Snap.

snappreviewanywhere.gif

Before we continue, you might know that I have Snap previews running on ReveNews and I like them, and I’m fully aware that it’s not about what I like, it’s what our readers like. So if you’re a ReveNews reader, please sound off below or email me with your vote to keep Snap previews or not. Your vote will determine if they stay or go. jimkukral@revenews.com.

Disclaimer: I fully expect to be on the minority of this argument. But nonetheless…

From Nick’s blog…

Snap’s preview anywhere gizmo is ruining the reading experience for millions of people. Its intrusive, obstructive and unuseful in almost every respect and use case.

m188a.jpgIntrusive exactly how Nick? It’s meddling? It’s invasive? Like those darn kids from the Mystery Machine?

Obstructive? What exactly does it obstruct? A “clean” click? See below commentary on link hippies.

Unuseful? This is arguable, yes. To me, I disagree because I personally like to have a preview of a website before I invest in a click. That helps me determine if the website I am going to is worth my time. For example, if I see in the preview that the site looks like some spam blog, I don’t click it. That is useful to me! Does this make me a design snob? Yeah, self-admitted. I’m just saying… I find it useful.

Let me point out a few truths about Snap Preview Anywhere, in the vain hope that this misguided ‘helper application’ will die a quick death as we all start to see the sense of a usable website as opposed to a trinket magnet for the design challenged.

Accidental triggers: When scrolling, or just moving from one element (maybe a link, maybe a photo etc) to another, the unintentional triggering of the SPA popup is distracting, at best. It draws the eye away from the task at hand, and causes annoyance, and loss of concentration — if you’re actually selling anything, pay close attention to this point!

The task at hand was what? Moving a mouse pointer over a link? Again, I don’t get that, while moving your mouse you accidentally get a preview pop up? I’m not annoyed by it one bit. It’s helpful to me to preview. It’s like my quick little glimpse into the future.

Click stalling: Quite often, when trying to click a link that features the Snap abomination, I have to click several times to get the damn thing to work. This is too much effort. If your site is that hard to use, you can bet I wont be back, and neither will others.

I have not experienced any click stalling on any of my three machines in 3 different browsers. Works fast and quick. Maybe it’s just me though.

I trust you: No, really I do! Im at your blog, despite like everyone else being really busy, im at your blog! I just want to follow the fucking link ok? Dont crowd me like some over-eager second hand car salesman trying to sell me a dodgy link, just let me see that its a link, read the anchor text and decide if I want to click it. I dont care what the bloody site looks like, if you’re linking to it, that’s good enough for me — really, get out of my face.

Alright, the swearing part did make me laugh, but other than that, again, I don’t get the angst. I think we disagree here in the basic “use” of a link. I find the act of clicking on links work. Link clicking is an investment to me as I travel all over the Internet every day, I don’t have time to be wasted on crappy sites. Snap previews save me that time.

I kinda get what you must be thinking, I think. Maybe it’s some kind of 1969 free hippie linking movement that I”m just not aware of, lol. Sam, feel free to chime in here, I know you want to. If you fit that hippie link mentality, I hear Unbuntu is something you should be looking into.

Here’s what I know. I know that I like Snap previews, and I know that many other people like them as well. I also know that WordPress.com has enabled them on over 600,000 of their blogs recently, so that must mean something eh?

Let me end by finishing the argument Nick. Hover over the big link below for the final word.

Nick, Hover Here!

Repeat from above: You might know that I have Snap previews running on ReveNews and I like them, and I’m fully aware that it’s not about what I like, it’s what our readers like. So if you’re a ReveNews reader, please sound off below or email me with your vote to keep Snap previews or not. Your vote will determine if they stay or go. jimkukral@revenews.com.

More coverage on Techmeme. Digg & Bloggers Blog.

About Jim Kukral

You can find Jim on Twitter: @JimKukral.

Filed under: Internet Strategy
  • http://www.rustylime.com Michael

    Sorry Jim, but SNAP's do bite the weenie. They are intrusive and do not add anything of benefit to the user. They are, for lack of a better term, just a gimmick. For that reason I will never out them on my site.

  • http://www.jangro.com Scott Jangro

    Snap is awful, IMO.

    But I don't care who uses it because I've got it disabled.
    You can opt-out at snap.com

  • http://crashpodel.wordpress.com Ashish

    Hi Nick,

    Your entire article basically says that you personally like Snap previews. Nowhere have you actually rebutted any of Nick's arguments except by a rhetoric "Oh Really?"

  • raj

    Snap's not as annoying as intellitext, but it IS annoying. I don't have any problem with advertising or extra info, just not hover-popped stuff. I read a lot of sites daily because I have to, but I've been hating all the sites with these popups lately.

  • Chris

    glad to see them go – unless its helping to generate money for revenews, I don’t see the point.

  • http://www.cumbrowski.com Carsten Cumbrowski

    Snap does not give anything helpful, but that is my personal opinion. I don’t care if a site is using it or not either. I would not add it to my site, but also not stop using another site because they like and use it.

    P.s. I hope ReveNews is not linking to any Spam Blog :) . I hope the bloggers only link to stuff that is relevant. I know that you can’t control all Ads on the site, especially AdSense, but I am not clicking those anyway (different story :) ).

  • http://www.intuitive.com/blog/ Dave Taylor

    Actually, in a lot of ways, Snap Previews is one of the more interesting “Web 2.0″ add-ons to a blog because it’s consistent with the original vision of the hyperlinked world. Go back to something like “Computer Lib” or the Xanadu Project and you’ll find that one of the important elements of hyperlinking is that you would be able to see *why someone linked to that element* rather than just the existence of the link.

    From a theoretical perspective, imagine that every page has a series of strings emanating from it, strings that link to other pages, ad infinitum. Well, the original vision of hypermedia would have had those strings *labeled* so you would be able to preview where you were going and why.

    Interesting, eh? Now this suggests that maybe we can view Span Previews in a slightly different light… and if they allowed you to add a small explanation to those preview windows… :-)

  • http://www.jimmydaniels.com Jimmy Daniels

    I've hated it ever since it was added here and at Techcrunch. It seems it is always popping up in the way of what I am reading, and lots of the time it just says it is cued up and doesn't even display anything. It should go the way of midi files…

  • http://www.revenews.com/wayneporter/ Wayne Porter

    I think it is a matter of time before some enterprising hacker turns it on its side and uses some javascript to mimic the technique and start nailing people with malicious software. Just my POV.

    it doesn't bother me, but it doesn't add much for me either. I vote to lose it Jim.

    -wayne

  • http://www.jimmydaniels.com Jimmy Daniels

    Ah, I just blocked it and I feel so much better, thanks for posting Nick and Jim, now I can come here and not be aggravated again.

  • Clint Kinear

    I whole heartedly agree that Snap is useful AND it is easy to turn off if a reader finds it annoying.

    The thing I agree with you the most on is what’s the big deal about this? It seems to be link bait. And on that note, and in a hope to put this to bed, I will not put my blogs address in my comment.

    CK

  • http://www.shareasale.com Brian Littleton

    adding my dislike.

    however, just found out I can opt-out!! but…now can’t find it.

    the idea isn’t that bad – and I do think there is value somewhere… but the unwanted popping and flashing and blocking and click-delaying… all of those things add up to me giving the overall thumbs down.

  • http://www.jimmydaniels.com Jimmy Daniels

    Brian, if you opt out on their site and then clean your cookies, it will start popping up again, add http://spa.snap.com to your restricted sites in IE and you are done.

  • MikeEast

    Finally we can vote to determine where we all stand in this question:

    http://www.digg.com/design/Do_you_like_Snap_Preview_Anywhere

  • http://www.revenews.com/wayneporter/ Wayne Porter

    Honestly- what is link bait? I hear this bandied around…

  • http://www.cumbrowski.com Carsten Cumbrowski

    Thanks for the tip with the restricted domain, Brian. That works better than the opt-out cookie.

  • http://www.paperghost.com Paperghost

    I can't believe nobody has done this yet, but:

    Oh, snap!

  • http://smomashup.com smoMashup

    Color me not a fan. I actually like the concept behind this kind of technology but everytime I accidentally mouse over one I always, ALWAYS feel like I'm being served an AD.

    However this handy little Firefox Plugin:

    https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1237/

    fixes all sorts of stuff like that. On/Off 1click control of onpage JS makes snap turn to links and Google's Image Search work like it's supposed to.

  • anonymous

    The bottom line: some *readers* find it helpful. So they should have access to it as, say, a firefox plugin? Then they’ll get it on all the sites they visit and can be happy. Most seem to (like me) find it annoying as hell, so we can do without.

    Conclusion: good idea, but placed in the wrong hands.