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Long time ago before any of the social media websites as we know it today, there was a free service that started it all. I remember it vaguely when I had my first website, trying out the best thing that ever happened on the internet at that time. It was the 90′s, and the service was called GeoCities.
This new service must have done something right as it attracted such a big name as Yahoo!. Yahoo!, in turn, bought GeoCities in January 1999 for 3.57 billion in stock. Fast forward 10 years later, amidst the economic depression that hit the US economy, things have gone upside down for the service. Yahoo! has decided to shut down GeoCities at the end of 2009.
Was it a good decision? Was it another cost-cutting scheme that Yahoo! put in place to survive the economy? Whatever the reason was, for GeoCities users, the decision was surprising, but expected. Most of the GeoCities websites are non-active as its users simply had forgotten about them. Mostly, it was the nostalgic value that they’ll miss. Quite honestly, I don’t even remember mine.
There are a lot of free hosting services sprung out since the days of GeoCities – like Terapad, Bravenet, and SiteKreator, to name a few – but none has the bragging rights to be the first of its kind. GeoCities may be gone, but it will always be alive in our minds.
GeoCities No More