Are you catering exclusively to an audience of tech hipsters? Are you trying to exclude those millions of poor souls who hardly understand how a tab works? Does your website’s style specifically obscure the links? Is the main purpose of your website to have a circlejerk with other Web 2.0 sites?

If so, Snap Preview Anywhere is the tool for you! Also, kill yourself.

P.S. How DARE you not want to use our FREE SERVICE TO YOU? RARRRR!!!

He uses fantastic terms like “most people” and “useful” in a meaningless fashion to tell how popular it is. I was particularly amused when he listed the “over 700K blogs signed up” for their service, but never mentioned how many of those “sign ups” were the people from Wordpress.com that got themselves signed up whether they wanted to or not, and had to take steps to turn the dang thing off.

I’d also like to know how many of those 700K users are still using it. “Cool” and lasting feature do not necessarily go hand in hand.

Inspired by Todd And’s Power 150, a listing of the top English language marketing blogs, I compiled my own set of ranking factors to create a list of Popular Parent Bloggers. Did you make the list? Here they are, ranked in order of popularity:
…

Frankly, it’s bloody irritating. I can middle-click on links I want to see quite easily and open them in separate tabs, which lets me finish what I’m reading and have a look at the link in its own window. Why on earth would I want links spawning pop-ups all over the place indiscriminately when I can quite selectively open a new tab for specific links?

No, it’s a plague. Besides, I’m firmly of the opinion that things like this should be tricks of the browser (to be enabled or disabled at will), not built into the visited site. Let the reader determine how they wish to browse. It’s borderline rude to force such an invasive technique on everyone who happens to come to you page.

With Snap Previews, it teaches people to be merely visual creatures, because, let’s face it, you aren’t going to continue on to many of the links that have a seemingly crappy design. It makes for, I think, elite browsing.

All this said, Erik’s comment:

Snap Previews allows me to process your writing in a less linear manner — in a manner that suits ME, and to focus on reading what matters to me as opposed to navigating back from pages that for whatever reason didn’t fit the bill.

couldn’t be further from accurate to me. Since when do you know what is written on a page by looking at a tiny screencap of it? If it comes down to reading what matters to a person, he or she will still have to click on the link to know what the heck is being written at all.

When reading your blog, although I trust your intentions when you link to related content, I don’t have the time to follow everything. Some of your links I have read in the past. Some of your links may point to pages that requires registration. Some of your links may be dead.

Snap Previews allows me to process your writing in a less linear manner — in a manner that suits ME, and to focus on reading what matters to me as opposed to navigating back from pages that for whatever reason didn’t fit the bill.

What is good for users is good for publishers. The Snap Preview technology allows publishers to enhance the experience for their readers — for free — and thereby empower them to make more informed decisions about what links to follow or not.

Re: Usability studies — I don’t know if this is what you are looking for, but I posted a write-up on the Snap Blog titled The Snap Preview Anywhere Use Case back in Feb.

Cheers.
–
Erik Wingren
Snap UX Research
erik[@]snap[.]com