Tuesday, October 27, 2009
The End of Geocities
Yahoo’s free space where anyone could build and host their own sites, Geocities, has come to end as of October 26. The life of Geocities started in 1995 as a small web-hosting firm and arose to its peek immediately after yahoo’s purchase setting it free to the online spaces. Its users became known as “Homesteaders” and indulged in their personal spaces making Geocities a central meeting place for a massive chunk of American Web surfers.
The decline of Geocities occurred with the emergence of social networks. With online users now using networks like EBay, Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter, Geocities numbers of users have plummet.
Yahoo decided that it was best if the company closed this first mainstream example of an open, participatory and personal internet and for them to also engage in $5-per month Web hosting service. This transition has led Geocities to lock its doors and take millions of pages offline. However, all of Geocities pages will be archived and be viewed via the nonprofit Internet Archive project.
With the disappearance of Geocities it marks an end to the pre-industrial era of the internet. Now there is only hope that the social networks we engage today can fulfill our needs beyond that of Geocities.
