How GeoCities Invented the Internet


	How GeoCities Invented the Internet

RayWatkins

11-11-2009 2:03 PM

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RayWatkins says:

A garish collection of home pages paved the way for blogging, social networks, and the rest of Web 2.0.

By Farhad ManjooPosted Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009, at 5:04 PM ET

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://www.clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/a1b4b5a8-4825-4487-9c17-8e0404b3f03b/093272B6-4A1C-4688-93E4-5CAE300D94B0/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.slate.com/id/2233723?wpisrc=newsletter" href="http://www.slate.com/id/2233723?wpisrc=newsletter" style="font-size: 11px;">www.slate.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.slate.com/id/2233723?wpisrc=newsletter">On Monday, Yahoo <A target="_blank" href="http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/geocities/close/close-01.html">put GeoCities out of its misery</A>, shutting down the last remaining pages on one of the Web's original site-hosting services. It was an ignominious end—and <A target="_blank" href="http://gawker.com/5390282/how-to-blow-35-billion">some would say a fitting one</A>. Yahoo's $3.5 billion purchase of GeoCities in 1999 has been called <A target="_blank" href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/21041-ten-worst-internet-acquisitions-ever">one of the worst Internet acquisitions of all time</A>. After all, just <A target="_blank" href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/arcangel/geocities-top-ten">look at those pages</A>! Brimming with blinking, moving, garishly colored text and animated dancing cats, GeoCities made MySpace look like a bastion of elegance and restraint. Indeed, the surprising thing about GeoCities' closure was that it was still around. One of the fastest-growing sites in the 1990s—at the time of the Yahoo purchase, it was <A target="_blank" href="http://money.cnn.com/1999/01/28/technology/yahoo_a/">the third-most-visited property on the Web</A>—GeoCities hit hard times after the merger. Eventually, the "home page" fad was surpassed by blogs and social-networking sites—and the fact that you'd once set up a GeoCities page became an embarrassing confession rather than a sign of your early-adopter savvy.</blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/093272B6-4A1C-4688-93E4-5CAE300D94B0/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content6.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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