GeoCities' time has expired, Yahoo closing the site today
We always imagined how this might end: GeoCities would finally take down all of the animated "under construction" signs, and we'd hear one last Midi file to the tune of horns playing taps.
Instead, GeoCities will probably go down with a whimper today.
Time is up for Yahoo Inc.'s scheduled closing of perhaps the most significant virtual museum in recent history. Years ago a central meeting place for a massive chunk of American Web surfers, GeoCities will lock its doors and take millions of pages offline.
GeoCities allowed anyone to build a custom Web page for free and reserved a small amount of virtual storage to keep pictures and documents. It was perhaps the first mainstream example of an open, participatory and personal Internet.
At the turn of the century, GeoCities was nearly ubiquitous. Fathers created websites about their families; kids created sites about Pokemon; teenage girls created sites about the Backstreet Boys. Practically every facet of culture was documented and thanks to search engines, easily accessible.
All of those documents are about to disappear...
... Some GeoCities pages appear to have been lost over the years. But an independent group called Archiveteam, headed by Jason Scott, has been trying to save everything left before Yahoo closes the building.
The group of dedicated digital historians have been pointing about a hundred computers at the GeoCities domain 24 hours a day for months. First, the machines crawled the neighborhoods, duplicating copies of everything in sight.
Read entire article at LA Times
Instead, GeoCities will probably go down with a whimper today.
Time is up for Yahoo Inc.'s scheduled closing of perhaps the most significant virtual museum in recent history. Years ago a central meeting place for a massive chunk of American Web surfers, GeoCities will lock its doors and take millions of pages offline.
GeoCities allowed anyone to build a custom Web page for free and reserved a small amount of virtual storage to keep pictures and documents. It was perhaps the first mainstream example of an open, participatory and personal Internet.
At the turn of the century, GeoCities was nearly ubiquitous. Fathers created websites about their families; kids created sites about Pokemon; teenage girls created sites about the Backstreet Boys. Practically every facet of culture was documented and thanks to search engines, easily accessible.
All of those documents are about to disappear...
... Some GeoCities pages appear to have been lost over the years. But an independent group called Archiveteam, headed by Jason Scott, has been trying to save everything left before Yahoo closes the building.
The group of dedicated digital historians have been pointing about a hundred computers at the GeoCities domain 24 hours a day for months. First, the machines crawled the neighborhoods, duplicating copies of everything in sight.