Recently, Snap asked websites who are using Snap Shots to share their experiences with everyone. The outpouring exceeded our expectations and has come from all over the globe. We're going to try to publish 2-3 per week, so check back regularly or subscribe to the RSS feed.

If you have an article about your Snap Shots Experience, please email it to us along with your address and t-shirt size. If chosen, you’ll receive a free Snap Shots shirt and swag. Articles should focus on your actual experience with Snap Shots and should not be mindless cheerleading just to get a free shirt. (We’re perfectly capable of mindlessly cheerleading ourselves, thank you very much, and can help ourselves to shirts any time!)

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Farhad Divecha
Director
Accuracast
London

We had seen snapshots in use on a number of well-known sites and thought it was a cool technology. When we decided to upgrade our site and blog to bring a more “Web 2.0” flavor to the site on the whole, someone suggested we use technology that allows users to get a quick preview of a link before they click on it to visit the site.

After searching and evaluating a few options, we decided Snap.com provided the most robust, easy to implement and flexible solution. The important points for us were:

1. The ability to select which types of links would show a SnapShot
2. The ability to customize what would appear on the link and on the SnapShot
3. The ability to retain visitors by providing a preview that does not require them to leave the page
4. The ability to deliver the solution to the widest possible audience that visits the site, irrespective of platform, settings etc.

The SnapShots solution fit the bill perfectly. We use it in two sections of our site. On the SEO Weekly section, where we occasionally provide external links for reference and on the Search Daily News section, where we frequently provide external links to reference other articles, company sites etc.

On the SEO Weekly pages, external links are provided as sources of further information or as references and are therefore clearly marked. We wanted to preserve our standard formatting and let the previews show up automatically when visitors mouse-over the link so that they can decide whether or not they’re interested in viewing the referred site. We initially enabled the RSS Shot functionality, but soon realized that showing a news feed instead of the actual page SnapShot was not helping visitors, so we reverted to the regular SnapShots only.

Search Daily News, on the other hand follows a blog-style news reporting function. We therefore provide a mix of RSS Shot and Preview Shots. As we incorporate more multimedia formats on our stories, we’re also exploring the amazingly vast array of SnapShot functions currently on offer, especially the VideoShot, PhotoShot, AudioShot and WikiShot.

The best thing about the service is how we can incorporate it in the most unobtrusive format, which allows us to maintain a corporate image and yet deliver very cool “Web 2.0” stylings.

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This unedited post reflects the views of Farhad Divecha. Please feel free to share your thoughts and comments below.