I was kinda shocked to hear this when I first read it on a tweet link. Then I rushed over to Mashable to confirm the news. It sadly is for real. If you started off online in the 90s, you would have certainly heard/used geocities, the free hosting site with a really simple interface.
Just put in something on word, save as html and upload it as index.html and your site is there for the world to see. For me, its nostalgic. Geocities was my first home online. I still have a broken site up there which I sometimes login to see my own roots. I have 3 really personal sites including one I made for my school crush(no way I am going to share that one!) which has a lot of java effects and animated gifs(90s’ style!). It was where I first learnt html with my trusted SoThinkHTML Editor and….its shutting down, so I am sad. ๐
But when I come to think of it, its a bad move by Yahoo! to close one of their content monster. Tons of user generated content and high rankings by google are not easy. Selling contextual ads would have been really easy for them and maybe opening up Geocities to third party applications will bring back the interest on this property.
I still see a lot of geocities pages on the competitive niches I research and right on the top of Google, so it does not make sense to me. Maybe they were not enough for yahoo or does not fit into Carol Bartz’s new gameplan. Have you used Geocities? Do you have a moment to share? Do share your grief ๐
Update: An interesting view by gawker.
Leave a Reply