GeoCities.com, once the third most popular website in the world and the internet’s first free website service, is shutting down¬†next week.
Back in the day – 1995 – Geocities was the only place on the web where a person could build and host a free website – and put anything they wanted on it. ¬†Unlike MySpace, where you are still limited to placing their frames on the site, the only evidance that it was a Geocities site was a small transparent, floating GIF down the bottom right of the site that read, “Hosted by Geocities”. ¬†Geocities completely rocked.
You’d simply select an apprpriate “suburb” – one that somehow reflected the tone or content of your website, and you began building your page. ¬†The suburbs were: “Colosseum,” “Hollywood,” “RodeoDrive,” “SunsetStrip,” “WallStreet,” and “WestHollywood.”
In June 1999, Yahoo! purchased GeoCities for $US3.57 billion in shares, and went about maing improvements to the site, including the introduction of vanity URLS, (eg: www.geocities.com/whateverxxxxxxxxxx).  While some complained that the suburbs had disappeared, it made it easier for people to promote their site on posters, nightclub passes, radio shows and other media.  At that time, companies and marketing agencies were completely oblivious, and most of the commercial use of Geocities came from artists, musicians, nightclubs, University clubs and societies and grassroots political branches and movements.
In the deep, dark depths of the Monash University Arts Faculty Computer Labs in the Ming Wing, scores of us scoured the then brand spanking new world wide web, looking for stuff. ¬†Once we found it, we “Homesteaders” (as GeoCities participants were known) ¬†linked to it on our Geocities pages. ¬†We wrote about rubbish. ¬†We scanned pictures and put them online. ¬†We wrote about things that we did. ¬†We put up fan sites. ¬†We actually created sites for celebs, organisations and brands that weren’t online – which back then, was about 99% of celebs, organisations and brands. ¬†It was genuinely groundbreaking stuff.
Where GeoCities went wrong was when Yahoo! slapped download / data limits on the site, and in doing so, limited the ability for people to share information and tell their stories online.  The Homesteaders revolted and started using other platforms for personal expression, whether it be hosted sites (that started to become a lot cheaper) or free blogging platforms such as Blogspot.com.
A site I’ve been intimately involved in, Buckleysurfers.com, a tribute site to the superstar Nathan Charles Buckley, is still hosted on GeoCities.com after more than ten years, and during popular weeks such as footy finals and other big events, the site’s bandwidth is regularly exceeded.
Upon the announcement of the closure of Geocities, the Internet Archive announced that they would be undertaking a project to archive GeoCities. ¬†In their words, GeoCities was “an important outlet for personal expression on the Web for almost 15 years”, and they ask people to submit their site URL or content for archival.