Snap.com Announces Snap Shots

April 18, 2007; 03:27 AM
Perfect Market Technologies, Inc., operator of Snap.com, today announced a new web service for delivering contextually relevant content directly to Web users. Called Snap Shots™, this new, open platform intelligently delivers related content such as stock quotes, streaming audio or video, product information and more, directly to users as they browse an enabled web page – all in a format that is useful and engaging to users. Snap Shots builds upon the rapid success of Snap Preview Anywhere (now renamed PreviewShot) which, in the 5 months since its debut, has been implemented on more than 1 million web sites and blogs, generating more than 9 million previews a day or roughly 100 images per second.

Snap Shots are a radical departure from the traditional Internet model of forcing users to browse web site after web site, manually trying to find what they’re looking for. Users trigger Snap Shots whenever they mouse over a link or the Snap Link Icon in an enhanced web site. Upon triggering, a small window appears providing the user with additional content relevant to the subject of the link or the enabled text. Snap Shots are interactive and put users in control of their surfing, making for a much richer user experience.

"As a blogger, I've come to depend on Snap to enable my readers to 'know before they go' to the sites that I've linked to,” said Guy Kawasaki of Garage Technology Ventures and an early Beta user of Snap Shots. “Snap Shots is a powerful extension of the concept of an informative link because it's truly hyper text."

“The launch of Snap Preview Anywhere generated phenomenal growth that was immediate and widespread, while also quickly forming an extensive network of millions of web sites,” said Tom McGovern, CEO of Perfect Market. “Snap Shots expands this platform and goes beyond delivering previews, increasing its usefulness and creating an ecosystem that is beneficial to users, content developers and web publishers alike.”

Snap Shots launches today with nine “Shots,” which include:

• PreviewShot™, formerly known as Snap Preview Anywhere, shows a preview image of whatever site a link points to. This shot delivers the same “look before you leap” benefit that the Snap.com search engine provides.
• WikiShot™ generates a text summary of a Wikipedia entry on any given subject. Users can read it right there at the site they’re on, before deciding whether to delve deeper into Wikipedia.
• MovieShot™ provides pictures, biographies and recent projects on entertainment-related topics, including movies and TV, cast and crew.
• StockShot™ displays in-depth, updated stock market info in context right at the web site.
• VideoShot™ allows sites to play video clips, without cluttering layouts with big, static images, or sending users away.
• PhotoShot™ puts an entire photo album into a Shot, allowing users to view the entire album without having to leave the original site.
• ProductShot™ automatically shows the Amazon.com listing for a product.
• AudioShot™ plays .mp3 files within the Shot and also displays information such as the track, the artist, the album art, etc., if available.
• Reuters CompanyNewsShot is a custom shot that leverages Reuters’ global news capabilities and the Snap Shot platform to deliver story headlines for publicly-traded companies and is dynamically updated throughout the day.

To see Snap Shots in action, visit http://blog.snap.com/snap_shots_showcase or stop by the Snap.com booth at Web 2.0 Expo, booth #326. Additional sites already using Snap Shots include http://www.techcrunch.com and http://blog.guykawasaki.com/.

The Snap Shots Ecosystem

Snap.com is creating an ecosystem based on this open platform in which bloggers, content owners, and large publishers can create new Shots – for their own use as well as distribution on the Snap Shot Network. New Shots and information on customizing Shots can be found on Shot Central at http://shots.snap.com. The Snap Shots Ecosystem includes Snap Shot Markup Language (SSML), a microformats inspired tagging system that allows publishers to enable Shots on any web content.

For content owners, Snap Shots provides instant, branded distribution across millions of web sites large and small, without the effort of building and maintaining a network and technological infrastructure.

Web site publishers, on the other hand, get a dramatically enhanced user experience that’s as easy as creating a link, yet with full customization options, by adding a line of javascript to pages that are to be enhanced. Then, every time the site includes a link to one of the supported Snap Shot URLs, the appropriate Shot automatically appears.

"Shots reflect a maturation to Snap's Preview Anywhere service that we all saw coming, but it still managed to exceed my expectations,” said Sal Cangeloso of XYZComputing.com and a Beta user of the product. “The system was easy to implement and should be able to add demonstrable stickiness to my pages while adding functionality to outgoing links."

“I implemented Snap Preview Anywhere on my Seth Godin's Web 2.0 Traffic Watch List and saw a 20% increase in how long people stayed on my page," said Ron Hornbaker, Webmaster, Statsaholic.com. "I can't wait to put Snap Shots to work on the site."

About Snap.com

Snap.com is a web search engine that, with its visual approach to search and intuitive user interface, provides users with a unique and more efficient way to view and interact with search results. Snap.com also delivers to businesses a more cost-effective advertising model that aligns search relevance with advertiser goals while also protecting them from click fraud. Snap.com was recently chosen as one of TIME magazine’s 50 Coolest Websites of 2006.

About Perfect Market Technologies

Perfect Market Technologies, Inc., operator of Snap.com, is dedicated to getting users to results they really want faster. Snap.com delivers superior relevance and visual, rich and interactive search results to broadband users, and offers risk-free, flexible Cost-Per-Action advertising with unmatched ROI to advertisers. Perfect Market is a network company of Idealab, a creator and operator of technology businesses, with additional funding from Mayfield Fund. Snap.com builds on Idealab’s achievements in the search industry, including its creation of the paid search model through its former network company Overture Services, which was acquired by Yahoo! in 2003. Perfect Market Technologies is based in Pasadena, CA.

Perfect Market Technologies, Inc., Snap.com, Shots, Shot Central, Markup Shots, Auto Shots, PreviewShots, MovieShots, WikiShots, VideoShots, ProductShots, StockShots, and PhotoShots, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Perfect Market Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ©2007 All rights reserved.