E.g. the popups used here: http://vanelsas.wordpress.com/2008/04/03/why-i-dont-like-friendfeed-as-much-as-i-wanted-it-lacks-intention/

Disclosure: I think they're really annoying.

Annoying. Distracting. Tacky. Often slow to load. Completely pointless.

I can't think of anything positive to say about them.

Annoying. Nothing else to add.

I don't like the implementation from that blog: the preview should be added if you hover over a preview icon. In most cases, you want to click on a link and that preview gets in your way. I like Interclue, a Firefox extension that adds more value to those previews: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4999 .

On that note, also another question: what do you think of those Snap pop ups when they use just the preview icon, e.g. here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/03/live-from-the-next-web-2008/

That's an improvement but I think users should choose if you want to see previews, their content, so it's better to add this as a browser feature.

I think its lame .. to have previews and I find it annoying. maybe its just me and my old fashion ways.. but thats just me :)

TechCrunch's implementation is better, but still incredibly annoying. I find anything that interferes with the text I'm reading though including adverts that cover it up and the damn irritating dictionary on NYTimes that appears everytime you click some text.

Actually, these snapshots are an "automatic" feature of wordpress. Didn't realise it might be annoying, but I found the switch to turn them off. Maybe that works better ;-)

I also think they are annoying. What purpose do they serve, anyway? This is the web. If the site behind the link is not what I'm looking for, there's that handy "back" button or a mouse gesture.

As a reader, they're not only annoying, but they can tend to bog down my browser.

As a blogger, I'd be concerned that my subscribers or visitors can't read my content without jarring interruptions. And if I need to provide more information about a link than the anchor text offers, there's always the TITLE tag which unobtrusively shows a "tooltip" when the user hovers over the hyperlink. In fact, I make it a point to include this attribute on EVERY link I build.

I absolutely hate them, they're annoying and serve no purpose; plus they don't really look good and often load slowly. To make it worse, one just killed Safari.

hate 'em. Hate 'em! HATE 'EM!!

Can't stand them! I wish they would completely go away!

Annoying toy for webmasters.

Very intrusive, especially when you're reading an article then you move your mouse by accident to the "snap" link then it pops up and you stop reading.

Often times, when i it does that to me, i stop reading the article/blog.

the biggest reason i use firefox and won't consider other browsers is for the plugins and greasemonkey scripts that block this very thing

Normally I hate them. The one place I've found that I like them is on LinkedIn. Very often on my home page I found myself clicking through to a person's name to get a little snippet of information on them. In many cases the information that LinkedIn now presents on its "snap" popup is as much as I was looking for, so now I don't have to click through.

Still, I haven't found any other good use for them.

Annoying as hell.

I've never liked one once, ever.

Hate them.

Haha, at work running IE6, they don't show up just JS errors :-P

But normally, hate them.

Annoying.

Coincidentally I just found out you can turn them off (click the 'gear-icon'/ setting button in the Snap-pop up and choose disable all websites).

I have no idea why Wordpress would have activated for every new blog.

Bad bad bad.

annoying. automated service delivered on one portal i often read delivers stock quotes for unrelated words in many articles. i'd like to have cookie settings to switch it off.

Truly annoying.

snap.com, ixnp.com well reside in my Adblock.

Annoying, irritating, a pox on them. Not only are they annoying, they obscure what I'm trying to read when I accidentally roll over one. The suggestion of a preview button to click would work much better. I don't like having things like that imposed on me when I'm trying to read. I'd rather make the choice to preview or not preview.

I hate them. It makes me not want to visit the sites that use them ever again. And I don't.

I hate them, I dont know why a webmaster or blogger thinks that improves the user experience in the site.

Those kind of things slow down the pages and you cant even read or see whats the page content, you barely see some colors, text and some images.

Today Im gonna start commenting and all those pages and saying to the webmaster to remove those kind of scripts.

I think they are an annoyance and nothing more. If I want to visit a page I do not need to see a miniature preview of the page beforehand to decide. As stated above, the box sometimes gets in the way of the actual link.

Well – I like them. Especially the one of snap that has features such as rss feed preview, imdb main details, youtube preview ...etc.

They are annoying cr*p.

The popups are obnoxious. And they are also useless, because the previews are too small and I am forced to click the link anyway in order to get a better view.

One word:
SNAP=SUCK

Why don't they just use the blink tag and be done with it?

I think they are annoying. If webmasters do need to add them, a better option may be to have another image/link next to the word (like wikipedia has numbers next to words which can be clicked to provide the reference information)

AdBlock Plus and NoScript are the first two extensions I install when I run Firefox for the first time on any system that I setup ... so I have no idea what you are talking about :)

Absolutely terrible. They are a content hindering nuisance.

They are really annoying.

Worst internet invention ever.

ugh they're almost as bad as pop-ups. if people want them, get a firefox extension or something.

Another example of COOL but USELESS "web 2.0" feature. But still, such cool thing still have its market. And I am pretty sure, apply such cool technology to most web sites will do more harm than good to the users and the websites.

I can't be the only one who uses a mouse the same way I might use a finger as a guide when I read. These pop-ups interrupt and distract from my reading – in many cases I just give up and go to a site that doesn't have them.

Is there any point to them?

I hate them. But I especially hate them when they seem to have been applied automatically to (for example) supply dictionary definitions for words that most people already know the meaning of. I can't say they would NEVER be useful, but the sites that I've seen use them so far obviously are more fascinated with the tool than with the information they are trying to convey.

I blocked the snap url's directly with the adblock extension because they were so annoying to see when reading blog posts on TechCrunch and other sites that use them.

There are reasons for tools like Adblock Plus other than epileptic fit inducing banner ads. Intrusive 'features' like the Snap preview, Intellitxt, and other content-modifying tools are one of these.

BTW, I put up a little tech demo a while back that shows how you can provide a two-click "whitelist my site" for Adblock Plus users.

A pure nuisance. Luckily, I rarely have to deal with them.

The first time I saw them, I thought it was a good idea. But now I find them anoying. Sometimes I just hover links to read the URL or to click them after I finish reading, and then it appears.
There's a 'disable' option in the bubble, I don't remember well where.

For me, its fun. I love it.

I hate them. They disrupt my reading.

I don't use them. If I want to know more about a word, I copy & paste it in to a search engine I trust (Google).

I hate them. This type of behavior should be the functionality of browser plug-ins for users who need or want this sort of stuff, not for webmasters to implement into their websites.

I think we've developed a pretty solid consensus

i found them annoying at first, but they're less bad once you block them
adblock filter *.snap.com/* :)
I do clear my adblock list occasionally, but block all ads from a site with annoying flashing ones, eg doubleclick
- imma

I agree DPic, dislike seems to be nearly universal. The question remains why bloggers use them. I don't quite understand the system but there seems to be a bit of ad money involved.

http://www.snap.com/snapshots.php

"with Snap Shares, you can monetize inventory you didn't know you had"
"Snap Shares gives you a portion of the ads that appear in Snap Shots and lets you do what you wish — market yourself or share them with charity."
"The Snap Shots Gold Publisher Program offers the most innovative and creative publishers on the internet the opportunity to increase incremental revenue with Snap Shots."

Hate them, get in the way of browsing, like many others here I have blocked them

As others have mentioned, you can click "Options" in the pop-up, and disable these Snap popups from every site (for as long as the Snap cookie stays in your browser).

The Snap Shots FAQ provides a lot of detail about how these can be configured:
http://www.snap.com/snapshots_faq.php

There's actually a lot of control. For example, a site owner could restrict the popups to just the audio and video players, activated by rolling over the icon. That could be quite useful for a site like Blogoscoped, or my site, where the content is basically textual.

For me, it's the site previews that are obnoxious. Media players and maps are a plus.

> Snap Shares gives you a portion of the ads that appear in
> Snap Shots and lets you do what you wish — market
> yourself or share them with charity

So it seems to work like this: Snap displays their own ads most of the time. Sometimes they display your ad instead. But your ad can only be one of these two things:

1. An ad for a charity, or
2. Your own ad (which can be an image with a URL behind it, or a textual heading/text/url).

So it's not so useful. (Wow, I can run my own ad on my own site. Who would have guessed?)

In question 30 of the FAQ, Snap suggests that you can use your share of the ads in three ways, including to "serve ads through your regular provider", but this third option (which would interest me) does not appear elsewhere (even later in the same question).

Hate 'em. Tend to leave sites that have them. Can't stand them. Double-underlined ads – even worse, completely insulting to me.

Yet another reason to love NoScript (not sure if it blocks this particular case, but I haven't actually run across them so maybe).

Technology services need to be monetized at some point of time. Snap services have been around for quite some time. Why is it being used ? Simple the user makes $$$ and Snap makes $$$.

Bloggers and website owners need to make living so they will do anything to get $$$ out from wherever possible.

BTW, if SNAP does no sell ad's then how are they to sustain their platform ? They will be out of business!

>Bloggers and website owners need to make living
>so they will do anything to get $$$ out from wherever possible.

That applies to growing companies or really popular blogs/sites.
I don't need to earn money to support my little website/blog!
If I can earn some bucks in some way it's ok if it won't destroy my site's integrity/reputation. I mean: it's more enjoyable to surf at a site without ads rather than going through a lot of popups, blocks, scripts and other paraphernalia overlaping with each other.
And, by the way, the almighty Adblock Plus is great to avoid that.

I see little to no functionality worthwhile from those stupid snap previews.

I hate them, mostly because the option to disable them never works at all. They're awful and bad and the people who use them and those who run snap.com should have all their favourite socks taken away from them.

Oh man, snap previews piss me. Hate those things ... I hate going to wordpress.com blogs because of it. I can't turn it off because it sets a cookie, and I've set my browser to delete all cookies on exit. I've been thinking of working on a userscript for Opera that will remove those snap previews from all sites.

Hate them. Hope they can be disabled.

Sorry I'm so late to pop in here – been trying to catch up with good old GB – but work has been crazy

I can't stand them – they tick me off. It's like so web 0.5 – and they're still being used – i tend to avoid sites that use them. But then again people have to make money.

wtvr – I hate them