Snap Preview Anywhere Has Got To Go; Even Though They Placed ShandyKing in Top 100
January 12th, 2007
Written By: Adam Sussman
Writing this post is a little awkward to say the least. Right when I sat down to write it, I found out via an email that Snap has placed me on their Top 100 Sites Using Snap. Considering that they have over 29,000 site owners using it, I feel this is quite the honor.
Unfortunately they might very well pull me off that list when they read this post. If you are not sure who Snap is, might I suggest you pop over to my post from last week on Snap, it’s a real quick read. Then when you are done you can come back and finish reading this post.
I’ve installed Snap a week ago and have asked my readers for their honest feedback. After a week of testing it out I have decided to remove it from my site. In fact I have come to the conclusion this tool hurts website owners more then helps them.
Before I go into why I feel the way I do about it I would like to congratulate the folks over at Snap on creating a viral product and for additionally getting Wordpress to agree on making their plug-in available on 600,000 Blogs.
This is obviously huge news for Snap and it appears that this company is growing strong. You can catch the CEO of Snap being interviewed on CNBC.
It sucks on my part to find out that I was placed on the top 100 then have to tell the world why I don’t want to use it. Since I did request public feedback, I should be honest and report my opinions on it.
I will start by saying that I do my best to use links within my posts as a way of citing my sources and I use links to provide my readers the ability to follow up on the topic. The fact that I am linking to a source does not mean I want my readers to stop reading my posts mid-sentence to click on the links and leave my site. I would much prefer to have you stay a little while and read some of my other thoughts.
Secondly, since I typically use my mouse as a guide when reading other peoples Blogs I find that there is nothing more annoying then moving the mouse over a link and having something unexpectedly POP OUT at me. I equate this to walking around a store. If I was quietly walking around minding my own business and someone jumped out in front of me, I might very well punch that person in the face.
If this is how I respond to things like this, I think perhaps my readers might feel the same.
Lastly, I know that when I am surfing a website and something pops out when least expected my first thoughts are that I have some mal ware / spy ware installed on my machine. I would stop everything at that point and take a moment to try and retrigger that action.
The last thing I want for my readers is to feel any anxiety while reading this site. The fact that I am luckily enough to have you here reading my posts it makes no sense for me to interfere and distract you.
Every once in a while something exciting comes along like Snap. At first the features seem dazzling as it allows me to offer my readers the ability to preview sites that I am linking with without them having to go to that site. At first glance the concept behind it is cool.
Unfortunately by allowing links to pop-up with little preview windows I am consequently telling you to that the pop-ups should be your primary focus when in fact I really want it to be your last.
It’s a struggle for all webmasters and Bloggers to keep their visitors engaged on the site; which is why I have to outweigh the coolness factor of Snap and focus on the primary objective of running a Blog.
I want you to keep reading!
January 12th, 2007 19:35
ShandyKing,
Good job, you have analyzed it and rationalized why you should offer it, however, it came down to the user, as it should. Regardless of what it could bring your site (ie links) you have considered your user and removed it. It is a nice widget, however, visitor retention and consideration are always primary!
January 13th, 2007 12:41
Now that is some irony. They put you in top 100 as you are removing their stuff and saying why you don’t like it. Maybe you could code your site so people could turn it on or off and have it off by default.
What they should do is make a firefox plug in that does the same thing on the client side.
January 15th, 2007 08:19
Good idea Adam - those little screen previews are so annoying for a reader. I just don’t understand the concept - by having a little screenshot of the link, is that supposed to make it more enticing for the user to click said link?
I wonder if Snap has any statistics on clicks form users for links with Snap shots vs without. I would venture to guess that the difference (if any) would be miniscule.
Reminds me of late 90s development. Remember when you could put little stars on your website, or have the mouse use little trailing patterns when you moved it around the screen? Just because you can do something development-wise doesn’t mean that you should. Often times in life, less is more.
January 15th, 2007 11:08
I hear you loud and clear. This is why I had Cooliris Previews installed (Firefox plugin that does a similar thing) but ended up disabling it. It’s too obtrusive.
Some people will definitely like it, but it’s not for everyone.
January 16th, 2007 12:58
Wow Top 100, ShandyKing?! Yeah, that would be too many invasive Snap previews that might trigger your readers to eventually just want to punch you in the face. I agree with Greg; less is more. Code up some snazzy stars trailing around your mouseover links instead. :p
January 17th, 2007 00:50
It’s a cool little gadget bit I already believe the links you serve are relevant and trustworthy. Many times you link to websites I’m already familiar with so it doesn’t help my experience. I do kind of like the gadget that tells you the popularity of the outgoing links for some reason. I don’t know why.
January 17th, 2007 01:43
Just popped in from a link at ogletrees, nice blog!
This snap thing. I think it certainly has a place, but as you say, maybe not on blog posts.
I use it on a directory or two and plan on adding it to a couple of other projects. Ever since we lost the ability to use the free thumbnails from alexa i’d been racking my brains for a similar alternative, snap is a good fit.
I think they could offer a few more options maybe.
Maybe it could work well with say, a blogroll for instance. Some little nosnap comment tags perhaps to exclude certain areas.
>If I was quietly walking around minding my own business and someone jumped out in front of me, I might very well punch that person in the face.
LOL - thanks for the chuckle
January 17th, 2007 08:40
Welcome to the blog RobWatts and thanks for posting. I removed the snap plug-in now but i do recall there is some special tagging you can do to customize what links get snapped and what dont.
January 26th, 2007 11:09
[...] However, you can really only see the basic page layout, you can’t possibly make out the text and it can be annoying if you’re scrolling through a page and you get what is essentially a pop-up. There have been negative comments on it as well, you’ll see a good summary of the bad points in these posts. [...]
January 28th, 2007 10:11
agreed!
February 11th, 2007 10:31
Yes… is there a quick way to tag links so that some have the pop-up and some do not???
September 5th, 2007 04:27
[...] a second opinion? ShandyKing disabled Snap Preview based upon feedback from his readers, even after he posted an article that got him in the top [...]
November 3rd, 2007 12:29
[...] preview on a mouse hover. This aspect of snap has been disliked by many bloggers. You can read the incident of ShandyKing removing the Snap Preview from his blog even on making an entry in the top 100 list of snap users. That was sad. CoolIris even has options [...]