Looking back at Geocities...

For those of us of a certain age, we remember the internet's first true global community: Geocities. Geocities (originally known as Beverly Hills Internet) was a free hosting service operating from 1995 to 2009. It was divided into neighbourhoods, each with a forum and a live chat facility. In fact it was the third most used service on the web in 1998. In 1999 it was sold to Yahoo! Many took the opportunity to design and upload webpages of their own design. Some of these have been preserved online on the Geocities Gallery.

That may or may not be a good thing—I'll let you be the judge. Click on the snapshots to visit...

 

This was more than just a personal page, 'Gas Sorted by City' was a place where someone named Pete could link on a hyperlink to travel to another webpage where he could check on the price of gasoline in any city in the USA! I wonder if Mom and Dad liked the picture?

Michael S. Smith's page was much more dignified. Proudly displaying his email for all to spam (as was the practice in the 90s), you could actually learn quite a great deal about Michael; everything from his age to his personality type. He was in fact an IT consultant so I'm guessing this page must have been cutting edge at the time it was uploaded. You could also do things like check his reading list and visit a page called 'extreme programming'. None of the links there are active so we are just left to ponder what 'extreme programming' actually referred to...

 

And it was often when the emphasis shifted from ourselves to others that things often seemed to get a little creepy. Chickenboy3 was waaaay too into Daniele Fishel (who?), and around December 1998 started collecting up every image of her he could scrape together online and posting it in a central depository for all our mutual convenience. He also gives us blokes some general life advice stating: 'Stop the violence! And remember real men don't do porn!!' One might also say real men really shouldn't over obsess over one woman they've clearly never met but I digress...

 

 

Perhaps someone should have introduced Chickenboy3 to Jacqueline? Some people clearly didn't mind sharing their image online. She was apparently an aspiring actress who had been in a number of short films. She'd posted some photos of herself on a newsgroup dedicated to redheads and the response was so positive she thought she'd start a webpage 'for your pleasure (and mine).' What's interesting is that by the time Geocities closed, 'Jacque' had established nine galleries of herself. And there were apparently plans for more...

There were actual celebrity fan pages of course - virtually all unofficial and unauthorised. This one dedicated to Gillian Anderson was clearly heartfelt but still creepy. The bio provided begins like this:

On a typically windy day in Chicago Illinois, Rosemary and Edward Anderson awaited the birth of their first child.

I've never even thought to ask my parents what the weather was like on the day I was born (they probably don't remember) but this fan has gone and looked it up. Think about that...

 

 

And then there was the undeniably quirky. Much of which at the time was the genuine spice of the internet. All you had to do was have access to Microsoft front page and perhaps have a basic understanding of html and you were away. Despite creating some of the most touching Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman fan art of all time, by the time Geocities closed, Vicki (pictured above) had by her own admission, sadly transferred her affections to the Harry Potter franchise and specifically all things Alan Rickman. She'd become too busy to take anymore fan fic subscriptions for either this or her 'Colleen and Andrew' site (I am genuinely at a loss, so please don't ask)...

 

 

And truth be told I had a geocities webpage or two. Both were actually preserved on the geocities.ws archive project and I was (eventually) able to reclaim. In fact I still maintain my family history site there which next January will celebrate its 20th anniversary. As my Great Grandaddy likely never said: never say no to some free webhosting! Good luck finding my other extant page! ;)

So in a sense Geocities didn't actually die, it just moved on... 

 

- Dr. Colin Woollcott Mallett, 10 November 2022.