GeoCities is no more – from hero to zero in a decade
In 1999, when the Web was still merely a small part of some people’s lives rather than the behemoth it is today, GeoCities was the third most-visited Web site on the Internet. Today, Oct. 26, 2009, it is being killed off forever, not just decommissioned and archived but actually deleted from the Web altogether. R.I.P. GeoCities – you will be fondly remembered.
I cannot remember the date or even year when I first had the pleasure of venturing. Although, in those days it was more of a chore than a pleasure in many ways. But what I do remember is that GeoCities was one of those sites everyone knew of. It was a Google, Yahoo!, or YouTube of its day.
It was actually founded in 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet before morphing into GeoCities. It was one of the first Web sites that offered ordinary Web users the chance of a piece of the action. In essence it offered everyone some Web real estate and the tools needed to populate it. And people did so in their droves, creating Web sites and blogs (of a sort) fitting all genres and niches.
At the height of the site’s popularity, and slap-bang in the middle of the dot-com era, Yahoo paid a whopping $3.65 billion for the site which then became Yahoo GeoCities. Two years later and the bubble burst. And out of the ashes came free hosting sites, proper blogging platforms, and social networks galore. Which all meant GeoCities’ time in the sun was pretty much over.
In April, Yahoo announced it was closing the site altogether, with new accounts no longer accepted from then and a date set for the complete dissolution of the site. That date is today, and GeoCities is no longer with us.
Thankfully, the Archive Team’s Geocities Project has been beavering away trying to archive as much of the site as possible before this day came. And although GeoCities and its passing will likely mean little to the majority of today’s Web community, for those of us who used it back when it was all that was available this day is a truly sad one.
I’m now wondering how much the Web will change in the next decade and which sites that are currently household names will be put to death.
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October 26th, 2009
Geocities certainly helped form the internet as we know it today. Before blogs we had this reasonably editable site development platform, with a degree of social networking thrown in. Good on Yahoo for picking up the tab when they did.
We’re now in a new era, with personal domains becoming much more accessible and hosting platforms more user friendly.
When I look at the sites I run and edit now, there’s a Geocities flavour somewhere there in the mix.
October 26th, 2009
Check out http://www.xkcd.com/ today for an epic tribute to the glory that was geocities.
October 26th, 2009
Geocities was the first place I created my website and although I do not use it anymore it is had to believe that it’s gone. Yahoo managed Geocities terribly while Google’s blogger is booming. Wish Yahoo had managed Geocities better.
November 10th, 2009
we just managed to save some geocities pages.
have a look at http://www.oocities.com/