Derived Regulation
Harnessing tech to address a nation's challenges
by Lim Sheng Ming , Brunei Darussalam
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Goodbye, GeoCities
Oct 26, 2009 13:03Today, GeoCities officially dies taking with it a piece of our digital heritage.
When I think about the beginning of the World Wide Web, the same five companies spring to mind: Netscape, GeoCities, Yahoo, Amazon and eBay. They all began operations at roughly the same time and, strangely enough, complemented each other to give us a better Web. Netscape's browser provided a means to get around, GeoCities was a neighborhood to explore, Yahoo's directory gave us a map of the landscape, Amazon was the shopping mall, and eBay the Sunday garage sale.
Netscape was the first to go, but would eventually give birth to Firefox. We're witnessing the passing of GeoCities now, though it has yet to bequeath anything of value; Calling it the precursor to blogs and social networks is a bit of a stretch. Yahoo has seen better days and even I'm counting down till it goes under (or gets bought by Bing). Amazon and eBay seem to be going strong, though. Rather ironic seeing as how amid a culture built on getting things for free they're the only two that required their customers to shell out.
Many, myself included, would love to see all those crappy, flashing animated .gifs die with GeoCities, but they still represent a part of our shared digital history. Isn't it odd how the same technology that made it easy to create GeoCities could also be used to preserve it, yet we would prefer to let it go? The Web today is standing on the shoulder of giants much like how modern medicine owes a great debt to the primitive techniques of medieval doctors. Yet, we afford greater respect to Bloodletting than to GeoCities.
It doesn't really matter if you sneer good riddance
or wave goodbye
because GeoCities is going anyway. But be sure to check out the exhibit This Page Is Under Construction which show cases various "Under Construction" images that the The Archive Team pulled out of GeoCities while trying to save it. When I accessed it, there were nearly 1,000 "Under Construction" images. So tread with care.
- Talkback
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Ha! I had a Geocities website and i spent the better part of tonight actually saving all my files for archive (forgoten about it - good thing you blogged about it!)
Oct 27, 2009 23:43
R.I.P., GeoCities. I'll always have fond memories of this service 'coz I made my very first website on GeoCities back in 1998.
And what do you know, haven't seen it in years but turns out my old GeoCities page Darkspiral's Babel Machine is preserved on Archive.org: web.archive.org... Haha, man, this dates me! :)
Thanks for this post, waxing nostalgic now.
Oct 28, 2009 08:25
As far as I remember Yahoo bought GeoCities some years ago ( I just looked up, Yahoo bought GeoCities for $3.6 billion in stock at 1999) ; so It is actually a part of yahoo services that is shutting down, I wonder why yahoo does not recommend another service for content generation / hosting in geocities page or does not keep geocities as part of its small business/ personal free hosting. I don't like the way yahoo evolves, it is closing to death each time, losing in each market that has been a major player.
Oct 29, 2009 02:53
I had a GeoCities site too. It was one of those things I did during my teenage years and something I'm rather embarrassed by now. My only solace is that the page was actually linked in Wikipedia (points for me!)
@RezaHashemi
When Yahoo planned to close GeoCities they did encourage their users to switch to their paid hosting. Not surprising really but it would have been nice if they'd listed some free alternatives. But who would willingly advertise their competitor's products?
Oh wait....
Oct 30, 2009 08:23
About Lim Sheng Ming
Tired of relatives misspelling his name, Lim Sheng Ming christened himself "LSM". Born in Brunei, he is currently based in intoxicating Japan where he is supposed to be doing research. A published writer, an accomplished Latin dancer, a Tai Chi practitioner and a committed Lifehacker, he still finds time to follow standards-based Web development and promote Internet accessibility. He is also one of the few who have switched from a Mac (but don't judge him for that).
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