Hmmm. I definitely hear a lot about this from snap, and its unfortunate they got out there first with snapshots. Some snapshots are kind of cool and interesting but volume-wise most of them are mini screen shots of the target links home page. There is no doubt animosity towards them, i think they’re easy to ignore an are occasionally useful nevertheless.

As for Panels…

1) Panels are NOT snapshots are are the result of addressing some of the biggest problems addressed in human factors research around online navigation behavior. Specifically we set out top solve/improve why people don’t click – on either links (blogs) or ads (text based OR display.) To summarize the research there are two reasons people don’t click, including you whether you acknowledge it or not; 1) the link/ad does not have enough or the correct information to to sufficiently entice the user to click and 2) even if no.1 is addressed the user doesn’t want to be “detoured” (i.e. leave the page) at the given time.

2) Panels are modeled, at least philosophically, after the nutritional panel found on food packages. Simply, a standardized, text centric “label” that over time the user/customer can depend on to be there if and and when they desire to see it. We don’t all look a the nutrition label on foods every time we buy something…BUT…we do know its there if we need it. And sometimes we use it, and we can quickly decide to return the object to the shelf, OR, put it in the basket. We go through this same decision when considering a click on a link/ad, and Panels will dramatically help in the same manner.

Our model expects that most panels will be ignored most of the time – like nutritional panels – but will be indispensable over time because of their on-demand predictable utility. SO far my inbox is filled with positive, anticipatory glee about our early peek at panels. Time will tell.

That and I really don’t see this as fulfilling a need in the marketplace. It doesn’t seem to solve an existing problem as far as I can see, I think all it will do is create a new one.

Now if they can find a way to put something genuinely useful in the panel then I might come around. But I think the key is subtlety. There’s a wonderful feature on nytimes.com: if you double-click on a ’25-cent word’ a definition pop-up will appear. That’s subtle and insanely helpful. (Although I haven’t figured out when or why it is enabled, as most stories don’t seem to work that way.)

The web really doesn’t need another third party inserting popup annoyances into webpages. I hate snap.com and I’m not liking Panels for the same reason. I hope there’s a global perma-opt-out.

Then again, I also believe that e-mail should be plaintext. I’m probably not the “average” user.