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End of an era...
Oct. 22nd, 2009 12:21 pmFarewell, Geocities.
Its passing will probably not be much-lamented (in fact, a lot of folks will probably express surprise that it's been around THIS long), but I'm willing to bet that, for many of us, GeoCities represented our first venture onto the internet in the role of producers and not merely consumers. Before Twitter, before MySpace or Facebook, before managed content or even blogs, really, GeoCities' free hosting service was our first substantive foray into the "lookit me" mindset on the web.
It's been argued that Yahoo!'s acquisition of the service represented its death-knell, but love the Terms Of Service or hate them, GeoCities represented a BIG 'ol chunk of the internet back in its day. As of this Monday, GeoCities joins The Briefcase, RocketMail and MusicMatch in Yahoo!'s unfortunately-lengthening list of disappointments. But to tag it with the label FAIL, in my opinion, would be incorrect --at its peak (1999) it was ranked as the third most-visited site on the web, making it very much the Facebook of its day. For that reason if nothing else, I contend that GeoCities has earned a dignified retirement alongside the likes of sidewalk.com, NuPedia, and OmniDrive.
Its passing will probably not be much-lamented (in fact, a lot of folks will probably express surprise that it's been around THIS long), but I'm willing to bet that, for many of us, GeoCities represented our first venture onto the internet in the role of producers and not merely consumers. Before Twitter, before MySpace or Facebook, before managed content or even blogs, really, GeoCities' free hosting service was our first substantive foray into the "lookit me" mindset on the web.
It's been argued that Yahoo!'s acquisition of the service represented its death-knell, but love the Terms Of Service or hate them, GeoCities represented a BIG 'ol chunk of the internet back in its day. As of this Monday, GeoCities joins The Briefcase, RocketMail and MusicMatch in Yahoo!'s unfortunately-lengthening list of disappointments. But to tag it with the label FAIL, in my opinion, would be incorrect --at its peak (1999) it was ranked as the third most-visited site on the web, making it very much the Facebook of its day. For that reason if nothing else, I contend that GeoCities has earned a dignified retirement alongside the likes of sidewalk.com, NuPedia, and OmniDrive.
