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GeoCities: The end of an era
If you’re internet age makes you too young to remember, way back in 1994 there was a little something born called GeoCities. I’d be very surprised if you hadn’t stumbled on a GeoCities eyesore at one time or another during your time online.
GeoCities, as the name does not suggest, was a pre-cursor to the Myspace phenomena where people could easily publish a web page for just about any purpose they saw fit - and at no cost. And just like Myspace which was to follow over a decade later, horrific design, poor usability and copyright infringement were rampant.
It turns out the powers that be at GeoCities (Yahoo bought GeoCities in 1999) have at long last decided to pull the plug on the aging service, and when the clock strike midnight on October 26 2009, all user pages - nearly 15 years worth of data - will be obliterated.
Yahoo make mention of this on the help page:
“…we have decided to focus on helping our customers explore and build relationships online in other ways. Beginning on October 26, 2009, you will no longer be able to use GeoCities to maintain a free presence online - but we’re excited about the other services we have designed to help you connect with friends and family and share your activities and interests”
For many people GeoCities was their first web site and for yours truly it was the place where I first started to dabble in HTML.
I surely won’t miss it, but a little piece of the internet history is officially dead.
-Mikey
