Snap Preview Anywhere: Fantastic or Annoying?

Posted on January 30, 2007

Nick Wilson at Performancing explains why Snap.com's preview feature, Snap Preview Anywhere or SPA, is annoying and why bloggers should stop using it.

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. The fact that so many big blogs are using it, big well respected blogs, does not mean that it's useful, it just means that they, like most bloggers, have all the self restraint of a magpie in a sparkly things factory.
That's not to say im any better, but it is true. As a group , most bloggers are only a small step away from the flashing, rotating logos of 1997 or the neon pink backgrounds and blaring teen pop auto play bollocks of your average 17yr old MySpace user -- and I include myself, though i dont use SPA, im as guilty as the next blogger of "bling envy".

Not everyone hates them. The SPA site has very positive quotes from several bloggers including Michael Arrington at TechCrunch, Matt Mullenweg, the founder WordPress and Scott Beale, Founder, LaughingSquid.com. The SPA site also lists the top SPA sites. TechCrunch alone is responsible for over 50,000 previews. Wordpress blogs have shown blog readers over 1.3 million previews.

We think Nick Wilson is right about the Snap Preview Tool. Snap does at times interfere with the normal natural process of reading a blog. The Snap preview pops up when are trying to click on a link often slowing down your ability to quickly click on that link. Seeing a preview is unhelpful and distracting when you were already planning on clicking on the link anyway. Unfortunately, the Snap tool is already on over 500,000 blogs and websites according to the Snap people. Those IntelliTXT ads can also be annoying in a similar way.

Update: You can disable Snap Preview Anywhere for all sites by clicking the options link on the right hand side of the Snap Window and then selecting Bubble Opt Out and disable for all sites. You may have to click the options link a couple times to get the Bubble Opt Out option to appear. You will have to let Snap use a cookie for the Opt Out to work.