Academic

Faculty Blogs: GeoCities, Dead at 15

Beloved early Internet icon GeoCities died today at the age of 15, slowly smothered by its adoptive parent Yahoo. Web pioneers fondly remember its rich neighborhoods, from the geeky confines of SiliconValley and Area51 to the bohemian districts of Soho, SouthBeach and SunsetCity.  There they learned the power and joy of personal publishing, even if it only concerned the question of whether Abe Vigoda was dead or alive, or the relative cuteness of their and their friend's cats.  It was preceded in death by the HMTL 1.0 Stylesheet, the blink tag and the dancing baby animated gif (shown on the right).  It is survived by hundreds of amateur webmasters, thousands of web-bloggers, Facebookers and Twitterers, and the enduring the idea of Internet freedom.

I myself never had a GeoCities page, having had access to a variety of university webspaces since I first learned to code HTML way back in 1995, but I fondly remember many pioneer sites hosted there.  For typical tributes see: The End Of Geocities ? A Farewell! and So long, GeoCities.

Full post as published by University of Louisville Law Faculty on October 27, 2009 (boomark / email).