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Geocities Shutting Down Today

Posted by kdawson on from the goodbye-and-thanks-for-all-the-blinkies dept.

Paolo DF writes "Geocities is closing today. Its advent in 1995 was a sign of the rising 'Internet for everyone' era, when connection speeds were 1,000x or 2,000x slower than is common today. You may love it or hate it, but millions of people had their first contact with a Web presence right here. I know that Geocities is something that most Slashdotters will see as a n00b thing — the Internet was fine before Geocities — but nevertheless I think that some credit is due. Heck, there's even a modified xkcd homepage to mark the occasion." Reader commodore64_love notes a few more tributes around the Web. Last spring we discussed Yahoo's announcment that Geocities would be going away.

4 of 396 comments (clear)

  1. check the source. by jointm1k · · Score: 5, Informative

    Heck, there's even a modified xkcd homepage to mark the occasion."

    <HTML WEB="2.0">
    <HEAD>
    <TITLE>

    ...

    </HTML>
    GOTO 10

    --
    You know it makes sense, a little reminder from jointm1k.
  2. Re:N00b thing? by LWATCDR · · Score: 5, Informative

    Has it been that long?
    Can someone help me install Trumpet Winsock so I can get my Windows 3.11 system in the internet using PPP?

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  3. Re:WTF Yahoo! by CharlyFoxtrot · · Score: 5, Informative

    At least they archived all the "under construction" gifs (WARNING: clicking on that link may be dangerous to your mental health.) If anyone's interested this metafilter thread has the story of the guy who created the first of these gifs about halfway in.

    --
    If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
  4. Re:N00b thing? by br00tus · · Score: 4, Informative
    I agree. In 1993 I heard about lynx and the World Wide Web, but when I checked it out and compared it to UMN's UNIX gopher client and gopherspace, it did not compare well at all, gopherspace was far superior with much more content, search engines like Archie and Veronica etc.

    In November 1994 Netscape released its first beta, in December its first full version. For me, this was really when the web began to look more interesting - Navigator was well-made, there was graphical content and so forth. Also, don't forget, Navigator could use the Gopher protocol (my Firefox still can - Aerv.nl. From early 1995 on, you began to see an explosion of web content.

    As far as hosting - in early 1996 I began working at an ISP which charged $50 a month for 10 megabytes of disk space, and the use of CGI, email and so forth was extra. And we were real cheap compared to some local competitors - people came flooding in to use us. Geocities began offering free (with advertising, a Geocities URL etc.) web pages in mid-1995, I created one in October 1995, as I certainly could not afford to shell out $50 a month for my web page back then. There was nothing really n00b about Geocities, Craigslist's web page did not have HTML as a job requirement when Geocities launched, in fact, Craigslist did not have a web page until 1996, the year after Geocities launched.