Snap Preview Anywhere: bad idea, dumb bloggers love it
Have you heard about Snap Preview Anywhere? It came across my radar when Lorelle wrote an open letter to Wordpress.com asking them to stop using it. Here's the down low:
Snap Preview Anywhere is a Javascript plugin you can add to your webpages that does the following: when your users hover over links, it pops up a thumbnail preview of the webpage the link leads to. If you are a dumb blogger who, by nature of participating in the act of blogging, thinks of yourself as some sort of alpha-geek-turned-web-expert, you are probably thinking:
ZOMG! WEB PREVIEWS! My users can preview webpages and make educated decisions before clicking! They will love me and I WILL GAIN MORE USERS! I NEED SNAP PREVIEW ANYWHERE NOW!
Now I hate to hate on all the bloggers out there who love this service, but I'm just trying to offer my experience and wisdom here on why this service is a bad idea. Let me explain from a few different angles:
The users are not stupid argument
Let me ask you something: do you think your readers are dumb? I understand the whole "don't make me think" approach to web usability, but that tends to be misinterpreted as "assume users are idiots who need to be spoon-fed." If I have a link that says:
You can search the web with Yahoo! search
do you think users are too stupid the glean the information they need from that link alone to make an informed decision on whether or not to click it? And if you do think your users are that stupid, should they be reading your blog (you big jerk)? I'm just asking questions here!
Now I understand that many bloggers like to use really bad links in their writing, for example:
We went out to the rodeo and the the bulls were crazy.
Bloggers who do as such, besides being bad, bad online publishers! can be expected to desire a service that does the job of providing useful information for them. It's awfully irresponsible, this idea that you won't take the time to learn to write good, descriptive links that your users will benefit from, but instead you will insert a heavy-handed service on your blog to do that work for you. Which leads us to the next point….
The thumbnails are useless argument
What does a thumbnail tell you about a webpage? Have you ever looked at these thumbnail previews? The thumbnail preview for Techcrunch.com, which you can view from the S.P.A. main page, gives us the following information:
- The site is called "TechCrunch"
- The site has green
- The site has some button-type-link-type stuff at the top
- The site has text left, ads right
Did any of that indicate to me what TechCrunch is about? Do I know at this point whether or not TechCrunch is a good site? Have I learned anything about the actual content on TechCrunch.com? No! Why? Because thumbnails are for previewing large images and other visual data, not content. They say nothing about all the information that comprises TechCrunch. They only offer superficial information that somehow, someway, bloggers seem to interpret as being useful to readers. Let me tell you a little secret: knowing what a webpage looks like before you visit it is nothing more than a gimmick. It does nothing for making "educated decisions" or "gathering information."
So what if it's just a gimmick? ZOMG IT'S SO COOL! Well, that leads us to…
The accessibility matters argument
I hate to break it to anyone who didn't know this, but these Snap Previews are bad for users. The popup effect that occurs every single time a link is hovered is bad for users who can't handle flashing content (e.g. epilepsy) or are annoyed by internet popups. The popups themselves cover text on the screen, and for users with small screen or very large text size, screen real estate is at a premium. Plus, S.P.A. adds unnecessary weight and load time to web pages, especially being that it is an externally hosted service, meaning that it puts dial-up and foreign users (which any decent blog has quite a few of) at an extreme disadvantage. Gimmicks like S.P.A. don't add anything useful to webpages or improve the user experience; they actually annoy users and can reduce the number of readers a blog has.
Now at this point you might think, WHO CARES ABOUT THE MINORITY? S.P.A. SAVED MY LIFE! Well, there isn't much I can say to you then, Mr. Stubborn, but I have to be firm here.
The gimmicks are gimmicks argument
S.P.A. falls in line with all the other gimmicks that bloggers have at the click of their mouse… you know all those flash and javascript gadgets and gizmos that people put on their blogs. Gimmicks are gimmicks and add nothing to what really matters in a blog: the content. Now one might try to overcompensate for their lack of interesting content with said gimmicks in an attempt to add superficial "interestingness" to their blog, but said one should stop blogging. After all, most users read your content via RSS… if you can't impress them with that content alone, and you aren't willing to learn to provide useful and descriptive links to your users, then there is nothing that a gimmick like S.P.A. can do for you. Sorry to be so harsh, but if you still cling to your gimmicks, well…
Ask the users
The main page for S.P.A. is covered with lots of praise from bloggers who love the service, but let's face it: bloggers are not users. It's one thing to assume that your users will like S.P.A., but it's another to actually ask users what they think. If any gimmick web service advertises approval from people like Mike Arrington, Scott Beale, and Ryan Carson, let's face it… that says nothing to me. I care what my readers say, and I can get that right here in the comments. Darren Rowse at ProBlogger took the time to do as such, and the majority of users agreed that S.P.A. was a bad addition. I think if more bloggers did the same, they would find that S.P.A. is a bad idea. After all, users know best!
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ZOMG, I hate Snap too!
Hey, you know what? Oh, before I say anything. I completely agree on (I think) everything you said here. Completely useless crap.
I was saying… well, I just had an idea.
Maybe this kind of popup could work a little better when referring to pictures in, say, comments on Flickr. I know you can put a thumbnail of some picture you're referring to in the comment itself, but it could be interesting to see the continuous flow of text with an underlined link referring to some picture, and, not having to follow the link or seeing the picture itself if you're not reading the comments, you could hover over the link and get a preview of the picture.
I don't know if I'm talking nonsense…
Well, it could be an improvement… a really small one.
The ONLY good use of Snap Preview is for graphic displays of, say, WordPress Themes, graphics, or graphic portfolio sites on review sites or blogs. If you are reviewing a web page design, then you can feature it via Snap Preview or just do a thumbnail graphic that links to the page on your review. Same thing, though the download might be smaller with the graphic.
If you don't, this is, as you so wonderfully put it, a time waster. It has its use, but that use is incredibly limited and limiting. It's not for everyone.
I 'kind of' see its usefulness in the points that Lorelle made, but other than that I really don't like them.
Julián, you might be on to something… the simple popup preview could be a good idea… maybe. Then again, in that case it would be hosted locally (by Flickr) and thus load much faster. Plus, it would be in a context where it would actually make sense (visual data) and it wouldn't be such a surprise. I like your thinking.
Christian et.al,
My name is Erik Wingren and I head up UX Research for Snap.com — the company behind the Snap Preview Anywhereâ„¢ service.
First, I would like to thank you for sharing your feedback. Please rest assured that your viewpoints are informing the ongoing development of this product. You are more than welcome to join the discussion about the Snap Preview Anywhere user experience on our blog.
Second, I wanted to let you know that we are working on an update to the code that will allow end-users greater control of the Snap Preview behavior.
These controls include the delay before the previews appear, the size of the preview as well as opt-out — all available directly from the preview bubble.
The first phase — with hover delay and opt-out — is scheduled for release late next week. Control of the preview size will follow the week after that.
In the meantime, as readers of blogs that use Snap Previews, you certainly have the option of preventing them from ever appearing. The current version requires a couple of steps:
Finally, in addition to making it easier for end-users to opt-out, we are working double-time on enhancements to enable site owners greater control of the implementation on their sites.
I sincerely hope you will continue to share your feedback as this technology develops.
Cheers.
Erik Wingren | Snap UX Research
erik@snap.com | +1.323.528.0058
Erik, I'm really glad to see that the team at Snap is working with users and listening to feedback. One thing that S.P.A. definitely needs is a way to restrict the service to a specific class on each link, so that it can be focused where it would be useful rather than just operating on every link. Another possibility would be if Snap pulled the title and description information from the link (you know, from the meta tags in the head) rather than the thumbnail. For most links, that would be much more useful to the end user.
Cool. I wasn't aware of the opt-out feature. Its also good to hear of what the SPA team has planned for updates. Those should help greatly.
Hmmm Bloggers like Arrington are dumb? In my experience I am pretty sure they listen to their readers as you claim you do.
Christian… maybe what I'm thinking of (about the Flickr preview) could be implemented right now with a Greasemonkey script (by the way, that's how a lot of stuff that gets implemented later begins), since there's a thumbnail version of the pic hosted on Flickr, and with the API and all it wouldn't be so hard.
Well, it's just that I don't know much about javascript, just the basic "alert('dumb alert');"
I hate snap, too. It is like annoying ad-popups. Dot.
Yes Loic, that's why his blog is so commercialized to the point that his users hate the way it looks. If Arrington were a smart blogger his designer wouldn't have resigned. Let's not argue the obvious.
Julián, I've never used Greasemonkey and I definitely don't think I could write something that complicated, but Greasemonkey has a huge development community so I'm sure you could propose the idea to someone.
Yet another toy to distract users. Wikipedia has an optional popup tool for internal links that can be useful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:POP It is shows plain, easy to read text and has links useful to wikipedians. I am using it now but it usually just gets in the way.
I totally agree with you, I can't understand snap previews. They only had sense in showcase sites or similar, where for some reason the graphic is the main subject.
Oh god, I hate that idea. I just decided to give up and adblock snap.com
Nice!
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Even though Snap has been around for a few years, I still think that it's just a fad. Can a fad last for years? I think so, especially when there is no obvious use for something. That would be the case with Snap. I think that publishers can earn ad revenue, but what do the readers get aside from a blurry preview? The thrill at seeing a new gadget-one of the at least 4 gadgets that the blogger more than likely has installed on his blog-some of which do the same thing as the others?
Snap is beyond irritating. Its foot in the door approach deserves nothing but obstruction. That's why I'm blocking it on the ns servers I manage.