Snap.com to critics: you wanna step outside?
Written on January 26, 2008 – 1:25 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Snap.com CEO Tom McGovern
Snap.com, the handy website preview service formally known as a search engine, just announced that they will take a more active stand against people critical of their service. It is only common sense for todays internet companies to interact with users on blogs, via Twitter or even Youtube. But Snap isn’t just evangelizing and talking to fans. Snap is a controversial service that has passionate users but just as many passionate enemies. People either love or hate those previews that sometimes seem to randomly pop-up when you navigate a Snap enabled site.
Other services tend to ignore the naysayers and critical bloggers and just concentrate on their fans. Their strategy for negativity is to just turn the other cheek. Not Snap. They started a blog to fight back. It isn’t hosted on the Snap domain but on a new and provocative domain: SnapShotsSuck.org
On their blog they write “The purpose of this blog is to acknowledge and respond to criticism of Snap Shots, whether the criticism is called for or not” and “When someone critique Snap Shots in a constructive manner, based on a sober analysis or well founded observations, we will praise the author and encourage further dialog. When someone criticize Snap Shots based on a blatant misunderstanding, with an intent to spread misinformation or simply to offend, we will respond with the facts”.
A few examples of how they respond: “Peter Van Dijck won’t give it a rest: Snap preview still really really sucks” and “Lorelle VanFossen once again grossly overreaches in her misinformed and sweeping generalizations re: Snap Shots in her year-roundup on the Blog Herald” their reaction “Lorelle, it is time that you start speaking for yourself or back up your statements with facts”.
Every PR manager will tell you it isn’t a smart thing to attack your users. But Snap found a way to do just that. They sort of say ‘Do you wanna step outside’ and take the fight to a separate arena where the gloves come off. They fight back at people who write (unfounded) critical posts and passionately defend their service. The Snap.com domain stays clean, the critics get feedback and I’m sure it saves the people at Snap from a lot of frustration.
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By Chris Kottom on Jan 27, 2008
Would it be reasonable to require bloggers who speak out against peaches to back up their accusations of bad taste or texture with long-winded explanations supported by a framework of interlocking arguments? Probably not, and I think the same logic applies in this situation.
These little pop-ups annoy people because of the way they hang around on the screen even after the user has moved his cursor away from the offending link. If the user’s response is positive or negative, it is generally a gut reaction based on whether or not he feels this is a welcome piece of information or simply an intrusion on his limited attention. It’s just a feature, not an application. You either like it or you don’t, and if you don’t and you don’t care to give a lot of thought as to why, I don’t know if that makes you such a bad person.
By Peter Van Dijck on Jan 28, 2008
Well, I still think snap truly sucks. Here’s my response to that: http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/a...../4016/4016
Chris, you got it right. I dislike snap, and it’s quite alright for me to express this, just as it’s quite alright for snap to explain why they think they’re so great, or for someone else to say that the Rolling Stones are a bunch of old farts or that the whole Facebook hype is just so booring.
I wonder though, I feel a bit intimidated by the aggressive tone of their blog and the use of my full name (great trick), and just the whole idea of how much effort they put in putting my blogposts down. I don’t think that’s quite right, and I don’t want to start to censure my thoughts on my own blog.