By Jimmy Daniels
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
Has everyone seen the Snap popup preview that is running on some of the big blogs like Techcrunch? I thought I was the only one who hated as I had never seen any posts about it, it was like they just popped it on their blog and no one cared, so I didn’t complain any. I couldn’t believe that Techcrunch added such an annoying thing to their blog, I know it had to run off some readers, I haven’t visited it very much since, reading it mainly in my RSS reader. Well, now I know I’m not the only one, Nick Wilson from Performancing just blogged about it and almost everyone who commented agreed. Woohoo, I was beginning to think it was the 90’s all over again, with the blinky text and the annoying midi files.
Snap’s preview anywhere gizmo is ruining the reading experience for millions of people. Its intrusive, obstructive and un-useful 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. Source: Performancing
We Say: At least I say, I agree with Nick and everyone else that hates it, and I can’t believe Wordpress added it to run by default, how annoying was that for some webmasters? Some people complained that if you go to the Snap.com site and disable it, that it will come back if you clear your cookies, well, there are a couple other ways to block it. One is to turn of JavaScript, I believe, not for sure as I have it turned on, or you can go into internet explorer, into the security tab and Add http://spa.snap.com to your restricted sites, and it is over. No more popup previews.
I’m not in total agreement on the negative aspects. I prefer this over the sites that have highlighted words / links that just lead you to links that have nothing to do with the story you are reading. with this, I can at least peek at what’s behind the link.
Am I missing something else that this does?
Also, does anyone know if this is an income generator to the sites that use it or is snap getting per-click revenue from this?
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Ugh. I’ve just started seeing this on the sites I visit. Perhaps the most annoying “Web 2-dot-oh” crap I’ve encountered.
If these folks made cars, they would honk every time you hit the brake. Disabling this feature would require pushing a button hidden deep within the fuse box, and it would reenable itself whenever you opened your car door.