It's official. Yahoo will be closing GeoCities for good on October 26, 2009. For those that are too hip to remember, GeoCities was one of the pioneers of free personal web hosting in 1995. Before then, having your own webpage was a luxury reserved for only the most hardcore geeks. This service was a pivotal factor in making the web accessible and entertaining to the masses. It was the distant pre-cursor to social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Blogger. Geocities was the stomping grounds for many people who would grow up to become the graphic designers, web developers, and technology nerds of today.
Alas, I am getting too nostalgic. In allowing anyone to have webspace, GeoCities created a glut of low-quality web sites. Compared to present day, the web sites of GeoCities are primitive creations. It is an online "house of horrors" showcasing animated gifs, blink tags, and multi-coloured h1 and h2 tags in the standard Times New Roman font. GeoCities is a relic of the early days of the internet, and the time has come to shut it all down.
I have mixed emotions about this. I have several horrible web sites of my own on GeoCities. One was a stub, which I have since deleted. One has become a personal embarrassment*, that I am happy to see deleted since I have long forgotten my admin login. One was pure creative glory that I am sad to see go. I'm sure that if you have a web site on GeoCities, it will fall under one of these categories. Enjoy them while they last because in a few days, they will be no more.
* One day this blog will be a personal embarrassment to me... if that day hasn't come already.
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4 comments:
Sniff! Those were the days. Can you believe it is over 10 years now? Ugh! I think another hair fell out of my head.
"It is an online "house of horrors" showcasing animated gifs, blink tags, and multi-coloured h1 and h2 tags in the standard Times New Roman font."
You've just described many people's MySpace pages.
Shouldn't you import a copy of those websites so that, in the future, you can break out the old laptop and show the grandchildren that you were down with the kids?
I'm sure it will be perfectly obvious to my children whether or not I was down with the kids. (Awkward pause.)
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