A couple of days ago, Yahoo announced GeoCities will shut down and I felt I had to write a short tribute about the web hosting service that, in my opinion, contributed much to what the web is now.

It was 1999, I was a college student and we just had a dial-up internet service installed in our house. I started to use the web extensively the year before and I was just thrilled to surf the web in our home pc. The sound of the 56KB modem dialing and making that handshake was like music to my ears.

As I was falling in love with the web, I wondered how to get on it, you know, get a stake on cyberspace. (Aside: who still uses the term “cyberspace” these days?)  I discovered HTML, used tables for layout (yes, I was guilty of this), and learned to build pages using Netscape Composer. I was also spurred to learn graphic design software, like Adobe Photoshop, and any other shareware graphic application just to get my darned header to look perfrect. My web page’s title? “Regnard’s Home Page” (yikes!) and the first content I wrote were a welcome message and a “Top Ten” list about the internet.

I searched in my then favorite portal, Yahoo, how to get my pages on the web and I found free services GeoCities, Tripod, Angelfire, and TopCities. That was when I learned about web hosting, how web pages were served on the web, and file management for websites. I eventually selected GeoCities because it was the popular service then and I was happy with my 2MB web space. I uploaded “Regnard’s Home Page” in GeoCities and, like Neil Armstrong planting a flag on the moon, I claimed my stake on the web. Imagine that little joy I felt as I saw my own work actually on the web.

That was 10 years ago and much has changed on the web and my web skills. And like the abacus, the rotary dial phones, and the casette tape, GeoCities was left abandoned as users wanted a better platform, less interruptive or no advertisements, and an easier way to share their thoughts encoded on HTML. I think GeoCities’ business model was doomed to obsolescence because people were unwilling to pay for a service that was offered better and free in other platforms. (Another Aside: don’t you feel much older when technologies or services you used to enjoy are becoming obsolete?)

I’ll know that 2009 is the year GeoCities ended. But I’ll also remember that 10 years ago, it all started for me in GeoCities.