the death and life of great internet cities

[bcbm]

http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/lost-geocities-reocities-oocities-facebook/

the tone is a bit 'luddite' in its seeming longing for these previous ways of life but i think the meditations on real/internet space and community are interesting, regardless of the author's conclusion.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

As much as people ridicule it, I think the internet is an incredibly world-changing invention.

I don't think you'd ever normally be able to converse with someone from, say, Maharashtra about an Irish sitcom. When you think about it, it's pretty knockout stuff.

Also, I didn't even know Geocities even existed! That's incredibly interesting.
I'll admit that I got onto the internet scene fairly late, but I don't think things like Facebook and Youtube even existed back then. It was all Myspace, some informational websites that had the visual quality of MS paint and artistic teenager-run forums (In fact, I think the first websites I found on the internet was a forum of format not unlike this one).

[bcbm]

Also, I didn't even know Geocities even existed!

holy shit, really? geocities, angelfire, tripod, there were all kinds of these sites offering 'free space' to build your own website with various tools to do so. my band had an angelfire website.

[Sasha]

I used to have an geocities but then I was already online for a few years, any old Usenet users here?

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

I remember me and a few friends had a site on geocities for our terribly amateurish flash videos back in around 2004-5. I believe we had a forum as well, which might still exist for all I know.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

holy shit, really? geocities, angelfire, tripod, there were all kinds of these sites offering 'free space' to build your own website with various tools to do so. my band had an angelfire website.
Remember homestead? Homestead makes me fucking cringe. But I get nostalgic remembering 2000-2001 when Geocities was in its heyday.

[bcbm]

its weird looking back. even myspace offered some degree of customization on the site. i met people through myspace. i've never met any strangers through facebook. or any other web thing besides this site since that era really.

[Sasha]

Yup, Facebook is preaching for your own paroch, even worse, because of its smart parameters people who you know less well so not to so much "like" etc will gradually dissapear from your newsline.

[Red Commissar]

I like looking at abandoned websites, it's something I love doing when I got nothing else to do but screw around on the internet. Geocities was great for this kind of stuff- it was a look into the past in most cases- early web design (repeating backgrounds, gifs, background music, icons as hyperlinks, etc), what kinds of stuff people obsessed over at that time, or maybe even something embarrassing from when someone was a kid.

Internet Archaeology? lol

The article is right though, interactions online have changed. Not just with sites like geocities, but even forums like these are not as used as much as they used to be. Social networking seems to better fulfill desires for socialization, rather than forums where like the article positioned with geocities, you are coming into contact with strangers even if they are likeminded or share interests.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

I like looking at abandoned websites, it's something I love doing when I got nothing else to do but screw around on the internet. Geocities was great for this kind of stuff- it was a look into the past in most cases- early web design (repeating backgrounds, gifs, background music, icons as hyperlinks, etc), what kinds of stuff people obsessed over at that time, or maybe even something embarrassing from when someone was a kid.

Internet Archaeology? lol

The article is right though, interactions online have changed. Not just with sites like geocities, but even forums like these are not as used as much as they used to be. Social networking seems to better fulfill desires for socialization, rather than forums where like the article positioned with geocities, you are coming into contact with strangers even if they are likeminded or share interests.
You'll get a kick out of this if you don't know about it already: https://archive.org/web/web.php

[Red Commissar]

You'll get a kick out of this if you don't know about it already: https://archive.org/web/web.php

Yeah, that site is nice. Only issue I hate running into is when the archived page ends up having broken image links- understandable considering how this works, but still it makes old web pages that were overly dependent on embedded images a total mess.

Though some companies cling onto their old domains, sometimes they forget them like this one (though they've since reintegrated it)

http://www2.warnerbros.com/spacejam/movie/jam.htm

Considering that was a promotional website done with paid designers, that was a standard of 90s web sites.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Yeah, that site is nice. Only issue I hate running into is when the archived page ends up having broken image links- understandable considering how this works, but still it makes old web pages that were overly dependent on embedded images a total mess.

Though some companies cling onto their old domains, sometimes they forget them like this one (though they've since reintegrated it)

http://www2.warnerbros.com/spacejam/movie/jam.htm

Considering that was a promotional website done with paid designers, that was a standard of 90s web sites.
I just had a flashback. Jeez. My childhood flashed in front of my eyes when I opened the space jam site.