Search start-up Snap has updated its controversial link preview service to provide more relevant pop-ups for key sites like YouTube, Flickr, IMDB and Amazon. Unlike the old Snap Preview Anywhere (SPA) service that just offered cached previews of a target site's homepage, users get a context-sensitive pop up when they hover over a Snap-enabled link. The users sees content from the target site that's actually relevant to content in the link text.
So, link to a specific YouTube video and your users will see a little preview window pop up with that specific video in it. Link to an actor's IMDB profile and see that profile, complete with active links to the films he's been in, in the Snap pop-up.
The company calls these containers for key, pre-approved sites Snap Shots. I really like this direction. Snap has taken the SPA model and made it much more relevant and useful. The company says it will approve more sites in the future.
For now, I can see this being an extremely way to present YouTube videos especially. Users can watch an entire video inside an embedded player inside a JavaScript pop-up without leaving the site they're reading. It's very slick. Check out the company's showcase for the new Snap Shots service.
Even though high-profile sites like TechCrunch adopted SPA when the service was released last year, those little pop-ups were much maligned by readers and site owners alike. These new improvements should win Snap some fans. The improved service is available right now to anyone running the old SPA code on their sites. SPA links to non-approved sites will also continue to work just like they always did, no matter how your visitors feel about them.
