• For a link that points to a tweet’s permalink we display user’s information and the content of the tweet. For example: this tweet from Lance Armstrong
• For a link that points to a user’s twitter page we display the user’s profile information and his latest tweets
• For a link that points to a twitter search results page we display the tweets that are part of this result set

Nominations for Mashable’s Open Web Awards have officially opened, and we hope our faithful users, publishers and followers will help Snap Shots be voted the #1 Blog Plugin!

To vote, simply type in your email and hit the “Submit” button in the widget below. Then spread the word and share your vote with your Twitter followers and Facebook friends. Don’t forget to check your inbox for an email asking you to confirm your vote.

Update: Voting is now closed.

First, I will start with what you should not do. For that, I am going to use a photo I took last week at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco. I have nothing personal against this guy but no wonder his booth is empty. So, never, never, never have a high chair, sit on it and wait for people to approach you.

Instead, stand up, face the people who walk the halls, be proactive and approach them with lines that would get their interest.

At Snap, our director of marketing came with a very simple line: “You need a pen!”. The typical answer is “ha?!” because this is the last thing people expect to hear. But then we pull the trick and show them that our pen also has a very cool flashlight that displays the Snap Shots icon. And once people see the flash light, they walk into the booth just like bees who get attracted to the light.

It is a page that shows the hot, mild and cold links, in a week of activity around the network of 2MM web sites that use Snap Shots. Search engine’s zeitgeist page shows what people are searching for when they start their activity online, while HotShots shows where people link to in their recent posts and articles and how their readers interact with that content.

Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch calls it “the linkgeist of the web”. I like that name.

Check it out (make sure you visit every Tuesday evening when an updated version goes live) and visit the Snap Blog to learn more about it.

Technorati Tags: Snap.com,HotShots,Linkgeist,Snap Shots,Zeitgeist

iA, a strategic design agency based in Tokyo, released the web trend map for 2008. Around 300 of the most influential and successful web sites and services were pinned down to the greater Tokyo-area train map.

This year, the map (which is available as a 3D poster as well) not only uses Snap Shots to display previews of the home pages of the different sites, but it also lists Snap Shots among the successful and influential ones. Next to Snap Shots, on the “Technology Line” (green), you can find MyBlogLog, WordPress, Technorati, Reddit, Blogger, Feedburner, Drupal, Opera, Adobe, Flash, PDF, MySQL, IBM, Linux, Python, Sony and others.

This is a very nice acknowledgement to the Snap Shots service, and a great implementation using Snap Shots.

• WowShot is our small contribution to over 4MM World Of Warcraft players. So, if you have a Blade of the Titans, a Lionheart Blade, or other items, feel free to link to them and allow your readers to preview them inside a Shot.

• The Badge-O-Rama contest has brought over 75 creative designers to send us their art work in the form of badges for web sites and blogs. Now it is time to vote. The winner will be determined by scoring the number of positive comments (+1) and the negative comments (-1) as of January 31, 2008. So, pick the ones you like and comment on them. Here are two of my favorite picks.

The "Snap Christmas Tree house" won the "Best Overall Holiday Diploma".

My team designed the "House in a Shot" and won the "Scariest Holiday Diploma". If you look closely, you will see tiny characters of the Snap management team.

The "Snap Hollywood Sign" won the "Tritest Holiday Diploma".

The two other contenders were a traditional Gingerbread house

and the "Shots on a Box".

Overall, the level of creativity was very high and it was a fun team building exercise and a very nice way to end a very exciting year at Snap.

Additional photos are available on the "Fans of Snap Shots" facebook group page.

More information here.

Less than 24 hours after my post hit the wires, I received an email from MyBlogLog notifying me that I was added to a community that I “have shown repeated interest in: adaptiveblue”. Well, it’s always a good practice to follow the competition, but to be added without my permission to a community I have no interest to be part of, and to be notified after the fact – that’s brutal and rude!

Think about it this way. Amazon has one of the best recommendation engines on the web. Can you image that a recommended product automatically gets added to your shopping cart just because you visit the product page once or twice…

MyBlogLog should change this features in two ways:

• Implement some web manners and change this feature to be permission based (opt-in)
• Tune the Recommendation engine so it won’t jump to conclusions and suggest me a community just because I visited the site once or twice. A repeated interest means at least three times. But again, this should just be a suggestion.