Recently launched ProfileSnaps allows for additional context for content on news websites and blogs, by providing in-text profiles that gives the reader a snapshot of information about a public figure. The information appears in a pop-up window, and is dynamically updated to provide the latest news and information about the person.
So if you clicked on Barack Obama’s ProfileSnap, you’d see an about section, which gives a short bio of the U.S. president; a Twitter section that shows his latest Tweets; a news section with headlines that relate to him; videos of him from YouTube and a photo section that shows a slideshow of pics of President. The profile also includes a links section to the individual’s Wikipedia profile and more. And ProfileSnaps can be saved by viewers, which will allow them to track and follow an individual’s profile, including a stream of all relevant news and social activity.
To enable ProfileSnaps, you embed a line of code into your post and another line of code around the individual’s name and the link to the profile will automatically be seen in the post. Once a site enables ProfileSnaps, it will scan a page for known names will include profiles for the people who the startup has information for. If there are names that aren’t in ProfileSnaps’ directory, the site will fetch information on those people from a variety of sources and combine them into a single mini-profile, building an on-the fly profile. Profile Snaps faces competition from Apture and SnapShots, which both provide conextual pop-ups for publishers.