I got an email from Joyce Jalleo of Snap.com business development last week politely asking me if I’d like to sign up for the service and add it to this site. The email lists five reasons why Snap Preview Anywhere (SPA); had such a rapid adoption (half a million publishers since November 2006) including (in a nutshell): Better! Smaller! Faster! Customizable! and FUN!

I thought about writing back with all of the reasons I think SPA is an awful product but the email was just a polite request so I politely declined. I wrote back, “No, thanks.”

And then today I got another email from Joyce asking me to sign up and to “let me know what you think.”

As if the service itself wasn’t annoying enough, spreading like some kind of raging venereal pandemic across the hoo-ha of the internet, now I’m getting spam from them, too.

Well, Joyce, here’s what I think.

SPA previews are an awful fad that will not go away soon enough. The real reason “half a million” publishers have signed up since November 2006 is because it’s shiny and new—and if there’s one thing the internet loves, it’s shiny and new. Half a million publishers signed up to run popup ads, too. Remember popup ads? Yah, no one uses them anymore because they were so universally hated they spawned an entire cottage industry of popup blocking software and plugins.

Popup ads sucked. They obstructed what you were reading. They were distracting. Guess what Snap previews are. They’re popup ads all over again. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!

Here’s the thing. I like hyperlinks. Links are what make the internet the internet. I don’t want people to stay on this site and click ads (there are none) or take part in the “Incremental Monetization through the Found Real Estate” of flagrantdisregard.com. When I link someplace, I actually want people to go there. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have linked to it! SPA is possibly only useful in certain niche contexts—mainly large indexes like search engines or directories.

Fortunately, unlike herpes, there is a cure for SPA and it doesn’t involve their temporary, cookie-based opt-out.

Open your hosts file and add this line:

127.0.0.1 spa.snap.com

On Windows your hosts file is in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts. On OS X and Linux it’s in /etc/hosts. Save the changes and restart your browser.

Snap won’t bother you again (unless you start getting spam from them). In fact, you may even notice that those pages you visit that use Snap load a little faster because your browser isn’t downloading a bunch of junk that you don’t want.