Amazon Web Services is discontinuing the Alexa Site Thumbnail service, which has been providing developers with programmatic access to millions of thumbnail images for the home pages of web sites that were stored in Alexa’s index since July 2006. New subscriptions are no longer being accepted, and existing subscribers will only have operational access until June 12, 2009. The service hits the deadpool.
Alexa Site Thumbnail was a paying service (developers were charged $0.0002 / thumbnail URL returned i.e. $0.20 per 1,000 thumbnail URLs) but in an e-mail sent out to developers Amazon admits that it never really took off and that the company will do the smart thing and focus their resources on more popular services.
Update: commenters are pointing to Girafa and PageGlimpse as alternatives. There’s also Websnapr, bluga webthumb, scURLr, etc.
Dear Alexa Developer,
We are announcing the deprecation of the Alexa Site Thumbnail service as of March 13, 2009. After this date, the service will be closed to new subscriptions.
The Alexa Site Thumbnail service will continue to be operational for existing subscribers for 90 days, until June 12, 2009. Use of the service has been relatively low, and we have decided to focus our resources on more broadly used services in order to provide the greatest benefit to Alexa customers. Thank you for your use of the service. We regret any inconvenience to you.
Thank you,
The Alexa Web Services Team
(Hat tip to Marc Hodgins)
A abd new for Developers. But everything fine with Alexa.
Sad News..But I think it Won’t affect much.
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
I never even heard of this service… I guess I wasn’t the only one. I think this was more of a marketing failure than anything else.
Jon
http://WoodMarvels.com – Create Unique Memories
Here is the best replacement http://www.shrinktheweb.com
Try http://www.shrinktheweb.com/
It seems like the price was too high for such a niche product. If you just want one thumbnail to display on your site, you can probably generate it yourself. On the other hand if you are displaying lots of thumbnails like on Yauba, it would probably get too cost prohibitive very quickly.
“It seems like the price was too high”
“On the other hand”
“it would probably get too cost prohibitive”
“I predict”
“I anticipate”
“I. I, I,”
I have spoken.
Anjali SpammerSen
From India
“It seems like the price was too high”
I agree to an extent. I think the pricing was very reasonable, except that you had to pay for every impression and no option to download permanently. That was always my problem with using Alexa’s Thumbnail service. Whenever Google/Yahoo/MSN would send a search engine spider to my site, I got charged for thousands of impressions.
However, that was my only real concern with their service. Otherwise, it was very cutting edge and someone provided some sample PHP4 code that worked well. So, it was secure and usable. It at least gave me some direction in my various web projects, until I eventually decided to start ShrinkTheWeb. I needed something more cost-effective and being able to keep a copy of the image on my own server was the key.
Cheers,
Brandon
Is it that resource intensive to keep it running?
Unbelievable! in the middle of developing with it…
You can get thumbnails from Girafa. They have a free and a paid thumbnail service – http://www.girafa.com
And you would be a fool to do so… I tried Alexa but the two week period for the update was brutal and then I wasted money and time on stupid german company… shrinktheweb was the best I used and it had everything to do with service. Best service I had and it can take less than a minute to generate a thumbnail not in their database which Alexa couldn’t do. You can archive the thumbs. I didn’t post a link so I am not spamming anything. Just for me in the development of a project I am a part of that is what we use.
Use of the service has been relatively low
Hardly bloody surprising.. it was a crappy service. It only let you do homepages (so you couldn’t just give it any URL and expect a thumbnail) and only in one of two microscopic sizes. This made it next to useless.
Let’s say you wanted to get the thumbnail for a page with a blog post on it.. oops, you can’t, because it’ll only return the site’s homepage as a graphic. Useless. When you have services like Bluga Webthumb about, why use Amazon’s horrible, function devoid alternative?
Does anyone know of other companies that offer thumbnails in an API?
You should check http://www.pageglimpse.com. It is also run on scalable Amazon AWS infrastructure, and it is much more faster than Alexa and other services.
http://www.thumbnail.cz will offer API in month.
Thumbnails are updated very often. The range goes from every day update for most pages to once in week for pages that did not changed for year.
I used to use their service until they started charging – there are much better, free services that do the same thing… was never going to last long…
Does it qualify for the Deadpool or not? Service VS Company issue? Just wondering…
The service was so much below the radar it didn’t even have its own Crunchbase entry (imagine that!), so there’s nothing we can deadpool there. But I’ve updated the post and tagged it properly, thanks.
I guess it is time to move on.
http://www.youtechno.info
I was just about to start developing with this… annoying.
Anyone know of some similar/better/good tools? API requirement.
not sure, but the SnapShot has something similar?
Cheers!
http://netwala.blogspot.com
Pageglimpse.com is a really good alternative …
shrinktheweb… website isn’t great but service is the best out of the 10 or so I tried.
I think there will be no effect like before.
Not a big lose, There are many other places offering same or even better.
Our company is using http://www.pageglimpse.com. Easy to use API, .NET library, worpdress plugin, everything we need …
No loss – hundreds, if not thousands, of alternatives. The open source project allows anyone to create such a service – like the early Snapshots and other widget services. Not much value-add needed from the developer.
Here is another thumbnail service running on GAE…
http://www.ScURLr.com
Our company also offers thumbnails for millions of sites going as far back as 2004 – and in API service.
http://www.doma...ric-thumbnails/
support domaintools.com
Nice post! Check out my site too at http://macmaniapodcast.com.
Never heard of the Alexa service, but that Page Glimpse service looks really good.
any FREE service you guys reccomend?
We have tested http://www.shrinktheweb.com/ and it seems to be working great without problems.
Same here, we are using shrinktheweb for the websites of our members and its working quite fine so far
(circa 6 months)
Been using http://www.shrinktheweb.com/ free service with no problem. They have plenty of thumbnail sizes to choose from and service is never down (so far)
ShrinkTheWeb has quickly become the leader in providing automated website thumbnail & screenshot services.
Here’s a nice special offer for abandoned Alexa Web Developers who were in the middle of using Alexa Thumbnail Services:
http://www.prwe...rweb2236134.htm
Best wishes,
Brandon
Brandon/Shrink the Web spammers,
Stop your dirty spamming of people’s email boxes and Techcrunch.
What is this crap in my inbox:
dateWed, Mar 18, 2009
subjectSTW: Support your favorite thumbnail provider!
mailed-byweb1.neosys.net
Please do … post a quick supportive
comment on this TechCrunch article about Alexa ending its
service:
http://www.tech...mbnail-service/
Best regards,
Brandon
-ShrinkTheWeb
http://www.shrinktheweb.com
STOP POLLUTING TECHCRUNCH COMMENT BOARDS.
If you want to buy an ad, buy one on the right of Techcrunch. Dirty spammer.
Greg R.? Tony L.? Not sure which similar service you run, but calling someone out as a spammer is a serious thing. Your email is an active double opt-in (i.e. not spam) member account of ShrinkTheWeb, so you get our emails.
I suppose you want to keep tabs on us. We’re flattered. Why else would you be so quick to attack us?
Best of luck to you,
Brandon
Dude, I am using http://www.shrinktheweb.com since it was just-a-test web site, I was among the first 20 users who registered and I am watching the STW evolution since then (Brandon, don’t take it personally, buddy
) …. but my point is that you can recieve this email ONLY if you are registerd to STW. So next time really think about who is the spammer.
ShrinkTheWeb is amazing and always on service for generating thumbnail service at a reasonable price as well as a free service. http://www.shrinktheweb.com
Shrink The Web is TOP of the line, and we utilize a premium paid subscription which is “Well worth the cost..” to display thumbnails in our Online Directories in various ways. Our clients also love them on their websites – with little, medium, large and extra large thumbnails, always in picture perfect clarity!
http://www.shrinktheweb.com
I use http://snapcasa.com/ on PokerDIY – it gives you 500 000 free thumbnails a month…
I use http://snapcasa.com also. The free service is very generous and their customer service is great.
Alexa’s service failed because it was extremely slow, snaps were rarely updated, and it did not have any features of snapcasa. I wonder how snapcasa was able to compete with amazon with their prices being so low?
I tried shrinktheweb but they could not match the performance and snapshot accuracy of snapcasa. They also cost twice as much.
http://www.shrinktheweb.com is good, I use their free service, you can currently have 250 000 display a month and 5000 new creation (if the url you request is not alreayd in their database)
before I was using thumbsonline but they quickly asked me to pay so there aren’t up to the task of my low to middle requirements. Shrinktheweb will do for several months as a free service as my audience is growing slowly.
After that I think I’ll use two or more services but alternatively, like 10 days a month each, so that I’ll stay within their free service
After using almost all thumbnail generator services, I finally landed on http://shrinktheweb.com which I find to be simply superb. I couldn’t find any competitor that could attract me more. I am a fan of the quality of their thumbs and the speed of their generation.
I love http://www.shrinktheweb.com
It’s quick and easy t use.
Enough said!
The service never appealed to me because it was too expensive for what they offered. Better they had offered it for free and found some other way to monetize the service.
I once spent two weeks coding a thumbnail generator site, and it was a lot of work – I say this with 7+ years of PHP experience and dozens of apps. It was incredibly resource intensive, so I sidelined the project. Before I had a chance to get back to it I lost all the code in a drive failure.
Anyway, I’ve been using ShrinkTheWeb ever since on a bunch of my sites and it’s been working quite well. Aside from a few slow days and a couple hiccups during upgrades it has been very stable. Considering I’m using the free service on a bunch of sites I’m certainly not complaining.
Can not see it making that much of a differance to the average webmaster, not when there are some exelent alternatives. we use http://www.shrinktheweb.com/ and their service is second to none from our stand point.
Totaly agree with Jonathan.
Customer service is ridiculously good at Shrink the Web. its not every day that you have the guy who runs the company corresponding you over installation issues. Cool, snazzy product and I am glad they are geting their accolades on Techcrunch
Thumboo (http://www.thumboo.com) has been around a bit.. we use the api, and the engine is fast and spread out across multiple servers.. about to go public, been in beta, give it a whirl!
I’m a very happy customer of Shrink the Web .. their service has been top notch. Implementation was super-easy. You can see it in action here and throughout the site.
http://quilting...lting-bloggers/
Thanks to Brandon and Ken for all they’ve done for me, and providing such a useful service.
I did a very short review last June of their services:
http://wizardev...s-for-your-site
Michele
Shrink the Web really does offer a great solution for my website. I subscribed to the Amazon service but when I found STW – I never looked backed!
To the small army sent our way to astroturf shrinktheweb: please stop. It lends you zero credibility, hurts your image, and it’s extremely uncool.
Robin,
I don’t really see how it could hurt our image we quite literally sent out simple note to our users to “post a quick supportive comment” and they turned out in droves to do so. As you can see our users absolutely love us and with good reason. Hopefully some of your 2000 readers will reap the benefit of these testimonials.
It was not our intention at all to spam, and I think by definition we have not.
“Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately.”
With your entry “Update: commenters are pointing to Girafa and PageGlimpse as alternatives.”, you invited commenters to point at alternatives. So this is not unsolicited.
These are also NOT bulk messages as each comment represents an individual’s opinion of our company. We are not offering any kickbacks for this lip service. This is simply how our customers feel. If anything, I would think you would be thanking us for sending all this traffic your way.
- Frank
I agree the email sent to us from STW (shrinktheweb) seems somewhat unprofessional and I was actually going to comment about them on my own behalf when I saw this in the news, however the email stopped me.
In fairness to STW, though, despite the sad email, they offer a good service to which I have had no problems with.
Robin,
I think there is some kind of misunderstanding regarding the use of blogs.
Blogs are meant to help people share their opinions. Our users have done so in the COMMENTS section. In fact, I only discovered this post because one of our users posted here and then mentioned it to us.
Did you highlight Girafa and PageGlimpse because they have only 2 users that love them? What is the limit? I did not know if any of our users would post or not, but I gave them opportunity to share their thoughts. It was not incentivized in ANY way.
I suppose what is really sad and “uncool” is that you frown upon the fact that we have more than just a couple of users who wanted to show support.
Good day,
-Brandon
Sigh.
wow, that’s going to be missed…here’s the best replacement service.. http://www.shrinktheweb.com
We’ve been using STW (shrinktheweb) for a month now and it’s been great!
Sad for the developers. I knew the feeling if you work hard and a service you used shuts down. So every work has to be done again.
I use STW (although one thumbnail is queued for days…) and I’m working on a own script. But not everyone is able to do something else.
Alexa we all love STW it makes me so sad that you dont love them too and think those little thumbnails on your site wont be as pretty anymore…. so I agree with all the rest amd say “Raise your hand if you love ShrinkTheWeb”!!!!
Hope AWS & Alexa come to their senses!!!
shrinktheweb.com is the only current alternative. Period! I have tested them all, the big expensive ones, the small unreliable ones.
STW provides for free a service that other thumbnail providers charge a lot for. So imagine what level of customization you get from when you pay for the premium service…?
I have been happily using it for over a year. That’s the best I can say.
I’m testing a service called SnapCasa.com, and I’ve made a simple wordpress plugin for sucking in my delicious bookmarks and presenting them as a grid of thumbnails. Works great in my opinion, see it in action and get the plugin here:
http://pappmask...no/inspiration/
The speed of thumbnail generation varies alot, but it usually is pretty fast. The snapcasa website is quite lacking in documentation, so you have to poke around a little to find out how to link to the thumbs (or you can just check the properties of the images on my site).
And please stop plugging Shrink the web, one or two comments is great, but asking all your customers to come here and promote it is just bad behaviour. This is getting close to spam.
I tested shrink the web but hated the website, impossible to find info, and it seemed like it (at least the free service) wasn’t able to create thumbs for pages below the front page, when I tested with my site.
yeah..I agree Morten…LOL…the service itself pretends to be good and great with all sorts of “HUNGRY” Comments..where the actual users didn’t like it..
http://www.shrinktheweb.com is a great service, try it!
From what I heard, the service was mediocre and not advertised well, so no shock really.
I use ShrinkTheWeb to create site thumbnails at my company (a large travel co). Works great for me.
I am using shrinktheweb.com and i think best website screenshot service on the web.
I retrieve screenshot without problem and fast.
if you interest just go :http://www.shrinktheweb.com
Best Regard.
I run a few successful specialised directories and have never taken into consideration website screenshot paid services before.
In my opinion, considering the current market offering, Alexa did not reall offer a flexible (sizes, internal pages) and competitive (cost) service.
Why to pay for a service that can be matched and/or beaten by other cheaper or free services? The only reason I can think is the Alexa brand/service long estsablished reputation and reliability.
Currently, there are many alternatives for this screenshot service.
During my personal research, I prepared and compared 5 thumbnail services in this page:
http://www.4icu.org/ws.htm
The list is not exhaustive and this techcrunch page made me aware of interesting services that I was not informed of before.
To me it is extremely important to have noninvasive error messages when thumbnail are queued or not available. I do not like cheap or invasive messages appearing in my directories from thumbnail service providers.
Currently I adopt STW free service for a directory of newspapers I have: 4imn.com
In another directory I use software that save thumbnails in my hard disk and, then upload them in the website image folder. It is however very time consuming and does not update screenshots automatically….
In my personal experience a good thumbnail service should be:
- fast
- reliable and working all the time
- able to take good screenshots of any webpage, including internal pages/subdomains and flash pages.
- easy to implement
- provide customised options such as “delay time” before getting the website screenshot (especially for flash pages), different sizes, refresh/update options (website screenshots do get old!)
Do your research before committing to any particular service. If possible test their free service first and then, if needed, upgrade to the best paid service which meets your needs.
ShrinktheWeb all the way. They have great service.
We are between Girafa and Shrinktheweb.com.
But I think Shrinktheweb will take it because of their great service and their vast selection of offerings. They are also cheaper.
i consider the quality of the screenshots are much more better than Shrinkweb and girafa..isnt it? compare mate…
The best of the lot… i tried giraffa, shrinkweb but I found Thumbhots.com service the best..its cost effective,great post sales services (within 24 hrs) and great new coding quality of thumbnails…I am content with thumbshots and i will stick to it no matter what goes off and in
http://www.thumbshots.org
That guy who called ShrinkTheWeb a spammer clearly doesn’t know his feet from his butt. You opt in for the emails when you sign up for their service. And nothing in the emails say “Comment on us or your service will be canceled” Its not like they have a gun to your head, is it? I like thier service, therefore im recommending them. http://www.shrinktheweb.com
I agree. I got turned to shrinktheweb because they really took their time to talk to me about the options they offer. That’s great customer service.
This stinks, but other options are thumbalizr, websnapr.com, and shrink the web.
Try the best homepage