Yahoo GeoCities Shutdown: Show Me The History

yahoo_geocities_logoLet’s take a look at the amazing remarkable history of GeoCities, an internet space that allowed anyone including me to build a custom webpage for free and reserved a small amount of virtual storage to keep pictures and documents which was shutdown yesterday:

  • Established in 1994 (…the founders: David Bohnett and John Rezner are literary early adopters to technology)
  • Started as web hosting company (…any one now can start a web hosting company with re-seller hosting packages)
  • Created a web directory (…for all people who are creating web directory now, GeoCities was doing it back in 1995)
  • Yahoo sign-up at GeoCities (…like now on twitter and facebook)
  • GeoCities introduced premium services (… asking who else other than Yahoo would like to join them)
  • GeoCities introduced advertisement (…this business model of online advertising still works but less)
  • In 1997, GeoCities was 5th popular site (…don’t get impressed easily, there were only couple of million of websites on the world wide web)
  • In 1998, GeoCities jumped on NASDAQ (….yuppie, they probably never dreamt of having an exchange code: GCTY)
  • In 1999, un-lucky Yahoo acquired GeoCities ( …it was literary before the dot-com bubble in 2000)
  • Yahoo acquired GeoCities for 3.57 billion (…that a hell lot of money)
  • Yahoo made people frustrated with terms of use (…probably their lawyers weren’t used to user-generated content)
  • In 2001, amidst speculator said that GeoCities has $ 8M loss (…so far)
  • In 2009, Yahoo announced to close GeoCities in April (…ZDNet editor said by that time about it the first proof that you could have something really popular and still not make any money on the internet)
  • In 2009, Yahoo closes GeoCities today on October 26th, 2009 (… that’s it)

Screenshot:

1996

1996

1998

1998

1999:

1999

2000

2000

2003

2003

2006

2006

2009

2009

Did you had an account on GeoCities?

Share with us when was your first log-in?

Tell us what did you used to do?

What were your favorite groups/pages?

Let’s hear your history….

Let us know your comments

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Tarek is the founder and chief researcher at Youngberry, a youth research and marketing firm dedicated to the region. Tarek founded interactiveME.com and previously worked as Manager at Flip Media (Interactive Agency), Bayt.com (Job Site) and Consulting House Qatar (Consulting firm). He is researcher and writer on internet & disruptive innovation, entrepreneurship, and youth culture.