Snap: read less, discover more

Sanp.com offers a set of what they call “snap shots” that publishers can add to their site. By using Snap Shots links are powered with a javascript pop up (they call it snap shots) that can showcase a preview image of the linked site. They can also display a related Wikipedia entry, a related video, profile, photo (Flickr), audio or RSS feed from trusted sources.  Alternatively, end users can also download and add on for their browser.

For publishers the incentives are at least two: For one, the “snap shots” has advertising real state that Snap.com commercializes sharing the revenue with the publisher. Second, the image preview of the link content as well as the preview of multimedia content from popular sources (Wikipedia, Flickr, etc) deter users from clicking away from the site and hence boost readers’ retention rates.

That explains why it makes sense for publishers to add snap shots to their site.  Clearly, Snap.com has a well thought out incentive structure for publishers. But the real kick lies in the added value for readers.  Snap shot is an efficiency tool striking a fundamental cord in current reading habits. People click on links to get a “glance” of the reviewed at the blog they are reading.  If a person or a concept is mentioned, users often open a new tap on their browser and quickly Google it to get a sense of which person that is or what that concept is about. Valuable sources that we often end up at are Wikipedia, social network profile pages, or other blogs. Snap has covered all the bases allowing you to preview all that information at the palm of your hand.

In essence, Snap is a distributed search engine which focuses on content preview.  Content preview makes sense because, as I have said elsewhere, people don´t read anymore. They scan, they skim, and perhaps they also glance at pages.

At the time Snap claim to reach close to 10% of the US audience so I think is fair to say that they are doing rather well (I would like however to get data on CTR, time the “shots” remain open –as a proxy for how many read them-, users feedback –was the info previewed useful, etc). My only concern is that from my point of view, the solution seems to be half way at best.  Allowing me to scan, skim or glance relevant content with fewer clicks is indeed of great value, but it does not solves the core challenges of the scanning, skimming and glancing new way of reading. And these challenges are: retention, structure and contextualization. I will try to write about these three issues in my next post.

One thing is for sure: If you add up to the Sanp product and commercialization strategy the fact that behind it is Bill Gross, one of the smartest and search savvy guys out there, one can clearly see that the company is set up to make some serious disruption on  the Web. As far I am concerned Snap is one of the coolest companies out there. Watch out for this one.

Surfing with scans and skims

Before we had the Web, reading was a diver´s craft; to read was to sink into the text. People pondered and digested books. With web surfing, reading has changed: we now jump from source to source scanning and skimming texts. In short, the Web (and in particular giants like Google) not only have minimized the perils of information gathering but they have also increased those of information processing and with it, they have fundamentally altered the way we read.

To scan a text is to look for something on it; a name, a date, a number. We scan legal documents for an end date, or for a word such as “fee”. Skimming is a quick glance we take to get a general sense of what a text is about. We often skim newspapers, in the search to get a quick overview of what´s going on with the world today.

On the web, scanning as you might expect is keyword related. We often scan Google´s results to see within the first page (s) which result seems to be more relevant. We look for that specific keyword on the title and description and see if it contextualized in a way that it’s consistent with our query. Scanning is more common when reading articles or blog posts. These of course are non exclusive methods of reading; on the contrary, they usually complement each other.

There are several studies that support this claim. I found particularly revealing a study made by Jakob Nielsen that says that 79 percent of the test users always scanned any new page they came across. For a more comprehensive description of the study read the following readwriteweb story.

My own experience (sample base of one) is that I usually skim through title, subtitle, and perhaps first lines of the body to see if it’s worth reading it through. After “approving” the text, I often conduct a low grade skimming in order to discover that one sentence or data point that I find of real value. What´s more, if I have developed a pre conception on the text after my initial skimming, I usually add up some scanning to the reading in order to more easily fetch what I am looking for.

As I mentioned in a previous article, Twitter is allowing users to microblog for an audience that is already “microreading”. In another post I would like to explore the current solutions that are out there to make the long post and articles we find on the web more “readable”.