This is the personal website of John Watson: father, software developer, artist, guitar player. Follow me on Mastodon or Twitter or Twitch or itch.io or GitHub.

Snap Preview Anywhere, scourge of the internet

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.

Comments

  1. The Cure for Snap Previews « craniac’s place on 2007-04-06 01:46:52 wrote: […] John Watson has posted a more permanent cure than the temporary, cookie-based fix that Snap offer.  The solution is as simple as adding […]

  2. Steve Crane on 2007-04-06 01:46:55 wrote: Cool. I hope you don’t mind that I’ve blogged this too.

  3. parl on 2007-04-06 03:57:26 wrote: Brilliant review. I personally think your customization does make it better! smaller! faster! and more F-U-N! leaves to restart his browser

  4. JayMonster on 2007-04-06 05:55:45 wrote: Technically (or not so technically), you can also select to have Snap Previews “universally” not sent to your browser (according to their Service) by selecting an option on a snap preview that turns it off. (For those uncomfortable with messing with the hosts files, and I know there are plenty out there). But thanks for pointing this out. Because of its “rapid” spreading, I thought I was the only one that hated these stupid things so much. I never liked “Intellitext” either, and this is like that bad idea after a Barry Bonds level of hgh.

  5. Friday Focaccia at Triple Venti on 2007-04-06 07:01:37 wrote: […] Fortunately, now I don’t have to as John from flagrantdisregard has done such a fine job, in Snap Preview Anywhere, scourge of the internet. He is even kind enough to share a solution, so you never have to see it again. Share and Enjoy: […]

  6. Marlo on 2007-04-06 08:55:10 wrote: Thank goodness for RSS readers. They shield you from all that.

  7. Norby on 2007-04-06 10:38:28 wrote: Thanks for the PSA on SPA. I hadn’t been quite annoyed enough by them to lookup the address to blacklist, but now that you’ve pointed it out, it’s gone. -//

  8. Erik WIngren on 2007-04-06 14:34:26 wrote: John, My name is Erik Wingren and I head up UX Research for Snap.com — the company behind the Snap Preview Anywhere (SPA) web service. While disabling Snap Previews at the host file level certainly works, there’s a easier way to achieve the same result: Simply click “Disable” in the upper-right corner of the preview bubble and turn it off for the site in question or globally. As a publisher you have a responsibility to your audience. If I was to attempt boiling down the science of audience research I would say this comes down to a combination of knowing who they are, what they want and what they need. Ask yourself the following questions: - Is your audience exclusively made up of experienced Internet users that read your blog using browsers that support tabbed browsing (essentially IE7, Firefox, Opera or Safari)? - Are you not interested in attracting and retaining readers that doesn’t fit this narrow user profile? - Do you consistently follow “proper” markup protocol, defining the target and title of the link within the opening and closing of the anchor tag? - Are your hyperlinks blue and underlined? If so, your audience is likely to find the usefulness of SPA marginal. If so, your audience is trained to pick up on the subtle cues already provided by the browser framework and the cost of occasional erroneous clicks are often mitigated through the use of advanced browser functionality such as tabbed browsing… However, if the user profile or markup principles described above are too narrow for your taste or ambition, I believe that by implementing Snap Preview Anywhere you would in fact offer all your readers more information to base their decision on which links to click or not to click, reducing the number of unwanted outbound clicks mid-read and, in effect, improve their ability to focus on your content, OR the content you link to that they truly wanted to visit. Finally, I’m not sure how your email ended up on our list in the first place but I will make sure it is removed. We offer a free service because we believe it empowers users. We have no interest in forcing anything on anyone. Cheers. – Erik Wingren Snap UX Research erik[@]snap[.]com

  9. John on 2007-04-06 15:00:09 wrote: Hi, Erik! Wow, you guys are quick on damage control, I’ll give you that. Disabling previews within Snap uses cookies which is why I said it was temporary—if your cookies ever get cleaned out or deleted (which happens quite often now, especially with built-in browser controls for privacy) you’ll have to opt-out again. Call me cynical, but isn’t a major purpose of SPA to keep people from clicking links in the first place so they’ll stay at the publisher’s site and click ads? “Empowering” users is laudable but you didn’t mention anything about empowering publishers—or did I misunderstand the whole “Incremental Monetization through the Found Real Estate” mumbo jumbo I got from your biz dev folks? Also, I can take a guess at how my email got into your system. Your marketing group was trolling Technorati for suckersbloggers who they thought were “trusted influencers” without doing any research before they contacted them (your marketing guys should learn that science of audience research thing). These are not the droids you’re looking for. ;-)

  10. John on 2007-04-06 15:14:26 wrote: Erik, one more thing. I’d love to read the results of your usability studies on SPA. Are they available on your web site somewhere?

  11. Lady S on 2007-04-06 15:47:28 wrote: Thank you for this. I hate those little snap things so much that I end up leaving pages that have them. Thank you for the fix, now I just need to figure out how to find my etc folder.

  12. Elaine on 2007-04-06 16:24:27 wrote: OK, I’ll be the one person here who doesn’t hate them. I implemented them on my site as an easy way to scroll through my links page and see new designs. Since I read everything via a feed reader, I don’t automatically see it when someone has updated their blog design. With the whole snap thingie, I simply scroll through my links and see what looks different. I don’t really feel the need to have them in blog entries, of course, but am not smart enough to figure out how to limit them to just the links page (my familiarity and knowledge of coding is silly-stupid, at best). I totally get why you find them annoying, but I actually find them somewhat useful. OK, you may all beat me with sticks now. (I was about to put a little winking smilie thing here, but was afraid that too is frowned upon. So just accept that I don’t really think you’ll hurl sticks at me and instead, I’m just acknowledging that I know my opinion may not be popular!).

  13. John on 2007-04-06 16:54:37 wrote: I’d never beat you with a stick because you like something that I don’t. I disagree with my wife about a lot of things too but I married her anyway. :-)

  14. tanyetta on 2007-04-07 00:31:35 wrote: John you crack me up.

  15. Erik WIngren on 2007-04-07 09:45:09 wrote: John, 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

  16. JustAReader on 2007-04-07 11:26:36 wrote: Jeezus - these guys just never give up!! (Just like their product, hard to get rid of - lol.)

  17. Lelia Katherine Thomas on 2007-04-09 06:50:24 wrote: The huge problem I have with Snap Previews is that it is a complete system for “judging a book by its cover.” Some of the sites I love are designed beautifully. Some of the sites I love are like deformed FrontPage creations from the 90s. Content should be king, whereas Snap tries to go against that. 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.

  18. Vicky on 2007-04-09 10:33:28 wrote: My personal beef with SPA is that it impedes my simply running my cursor across the page to get to a link I want or to highlight text. As you pass over links, pop-up windows attack you and, in some instances, actually get in the way of the text you’re reading or the link to which you were moving the cursor. It’s truly aggravating on pages heavily-laden with links. 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.

  19. MamaBlogga on 2007-04-09 13:34:20 wrote: Popular Parent Bloggers… 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: …

  20. JayMonster on 2007-04-09 13:48:50 wrote: John, if you haven’t click over already, you can skip Eric’s “Use Case” which really boils down to a page long “Oh Yeah?” to all the criticism Snap Preview has garnered. 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.

  21. chronicler on 2007-04-11 14:02:38 wrote: I thought I was the only person in the world that hated hated hated hated those things! I am so glad to be among friends here I just may have to direct a bunch of people here to prove my point. Thank you John!

  22. Shii on 2007-04-15 15:05:54 wrote: Ask yourself the following questions: - Is your audience exclusively made up of experienced Internet users that read your blog using browsers that support tabbed browsing (essentially IE7, Firefox, Opera or Safari)? - Are you not interested in attracting and retaining readers that doesn’t fit this narrow user profile? - Do you consistently follow “proper” markup protocol, defining the target and title of the link within the opening and closing of the anchor tag? - Are your hyperlinks blue and underlined? 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!!!

  23. Featured Blog: Flagrant Disregard : Clever Parents on 2007-04-16 10:25:07 wrote: […] written by a guy who changed diapers that morning. His posts range from family matters, to the scourge of Snap.com (which I wholeheartedly second), to what is probably my favorite post in awhile which […]

  24. subcorpus on 2007-05-02 00:04:38 wrote: yes its good when it works fine … but on slow connection and pages … it actually becomes a disruption to the browsing experience … it hides what i am trying to read … may be it’ll develop into something less intrusive … its kewl …

  25. Breaking the internet | John Watson on 2011-08-24 16:08:51 wrote: […] It reminds me a lot of what Snap.com and others like them were/are doing with hyperlinks. […]