It’s been just over a month since Snap Preview Anywhere came on the scene. It allows you (with a small snippet of code or WordPress plugin) to show previews of outbound links when people mouse over them. You scroll over a link and when you do so a popup appears showing you a picture of the site that the link goes to.

I don’t get it.

I get the concept of a visual web, and that text-only search is limited. The search engine Snap.com (same people) shows text-based results and preview images at the same time, on the premise that a lot of search results are crap. With the power of SEO, spam sites, junk blogs, etc. they believe that the images help people find better results. They may, but Snap Preview Anywhere is mostly annoying.

It’s annoying for a few of reasons:

1. It can be slow to load
2. It sometimes hovers the preview popup image over text I’m reading
3. It’s distracting

Plus, I’m not sure the little Snap preview images really show me much of anything.

Does seeing that image help me decide if the link I’m about to click on is really worth it? What’s in the image that makes me decide if the site is worthwhile? Is it the overall design, because crappy/spam sites can have nice enough designs…

The text in the preview images is typically too small to read, so I definitely can’t verify the quality of the content.

Lots of people love it. Others, including Lorelle are not fans of Snap Preview at all.

Two other notes:

• It would appear Snap Preview Anywhere is bad news for the disabled. Reference Lorelle’s thoughts on this for specific examples.
• You can get Snap Preview turned off by going to the Snap.com website and doing so. Looks like you have to sign-up, request that they be turned off and it’ll use a cookie on your computer. I won’t be turning them off (although I find them annoying) because I’m curious to see who is using them, what changes with them, and where the discussion goes from here.

While looking around for information and thoughts on Snap Preview Anywhere I read, “Snap Preview Anywhere is Popup 2.0.” That made me laugh. And sigh.