RIP: Geocities (1994-2009)

I was deeply saddened to read this Ars Technica post about Yahoo! shutting down Geocities. The service, which was bought by Yahoo! in 1999 enabled people with limited technical and design skills to create their own little home on the web:

Started in 1994, Geocities was like the Facebook to Angelfire’s MySpace—competing webpage services that allowed over-enthused HTML newbies to create artfully horrific webpages to represent themselves in the early days of the Internet. (I was a diehard Angelfire fan, myself.) Geocities was acquired by Yahoo in 1999 with the intent of extending Yahoo’s reach with its Internet advertising and services.

Geocities was where I set up my first website, and where I first posted my short fiction and various essays. I still remember the night I "published" my first short story on Geocities, after getting the HTML just right, and wondering how many might read my story. Probably not very many.

Goodbye Geocities, you will be missed!

Related posts

• Get ready for Kindle 2.0 in 2009!
• Irony Revisited: Stephen King, J.K. Rowling and the 10 most pirated ebooks of 2009
• My blogging goals for 2009
• Goodbye 2009, Welcome 2010 (and a new decade)
• JK Rowling spotted working on detective novel in cafe

Read More: Misc., Technology