Goodbye Geocities – Now Who Will Be Next?
I cut my online teeth with Geocities many many moons ago. So far back I can hardly remember what I actually did. I know it was a frustrating experience and finally abandoned what I was doing – and the internet for a while too.
I won’t say I have fond memories of Geocities, but I know a great many who will and I am sure they will saddened to hear that Yahoo! has finally pulled the plug.
For those who don’t know, Geocities was one of the first and one of the most successful free web hosting sites on the internet. Successful for a long while anyway. With the prevalence of free blog hosts such as WordPress and Blogger and the availability of cheap hosting, Geocities days have been numbered for quite a while.
One wonders where the internet may go in the future. I can’t see blogger ever being ’shut down’. But will it ever go to a paid only state? It is always a possibility. What about WordPress – will that stay as a free hosting site – or will they fully monetize as well.
I don’t think those options are on the cards at the moment – but you never know what the future holds. I do know one thing – if you’re serious about blogging, or building a web site, you need to buy hosting and host it all yourself. Free hosting is always going to be filled with uncertainty.
I used geocities, tripod and angelfire LONG back. And for me blogs killed these services around 6 years ago. I don’t expect blogger / wordpress to close down though wordpress might start monetizing the blogs ‘heavily’ if they come under weather.
For that matter, I never expected Altavista to go away, it did. Within blogging software / sites, livejournal and typepad could be cited as examples. They were REALLY popular 3 years ago, they remain popular and well known but the shine has gone.
With Amazon EC2 and Google app engine, it’s possible that even the bigger hosting business like Godaddy etc. might become obsolete.
Yahoo has been closing a lot of ‘once popular’ services. In a way it’s good that they are identifying non-profitable sections of their business and getting rid of them. I hope they won’t do the same for flickr
( I don’t know if it’s profitable yet ).
Blogger won’t be shutdown anytime soon, it has a tough competition from Wordpress, Livejournal and other local blog hosting providers but the service is still thriving. Initially I thought twitter and facebook might harm blogging services but thankfully there is space for all three in the world.
Hey since u hv a blog. Hehe. U might wanna check ozbloggers. It’s new & expanding
connects via Twitter
@ozbloggers
I remember doing basically the same thing with Geocities. Hey didn’t msn have a similar thing? I never got involved with that one. The one for MSN is Tripod isn’t it? I think they and Geocities are a lot alike.
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