GeoCities Neighborhoods

1995

Date: 1995-1999 · Place: Beverly Hills, California (GeoCities HQ); SoHo, Area51, Heartland, etc. (virtual) · Figures: David Bohnett, founder, GeoCities · John Rezner, co-founder · Tags: Web 1.0, Themed Communities, Personal Homepage 01. Pick A Neighborhood David Bohnett launches Beverly Hills Internet in 1994, renames it GeoCities in 1995, and gives every user a free homepage filed under a themed neighborhood. SoHo is for artists. Area51 is for sci-fi. Heartland is for family content. The Tropics is for travel. You pick the neighborhood that fits your page, then claim a street address inside it. By 1999 GeoCities is the third most-visited domain on the web, with thirty-eight million pages. 02. The Last Time The Web Was A Place Neighborhoods give web 1.0 its specific aesthetic: tiled backgrounds, MIDI autoplay, welcome to my homepage, neighborhood-themed link rings. The geographic metaphor is taken literally, with community leaders moderating each district by hand. Yahoo buys GeoCities in January 1999 for $3.57 billion, kills the neighborhood structure in 2001, and shuts the whole thing down on 26 October 2009. The Archive Team rescues 650 GB of raw HTML in the final weeks. "Welcome to my page! This page is best viewed in Netscape Navigator at 800x600." — Canonical GeoCities homepage opener, c. 1996 Sources • Wired, 'GeoCities: A Pale Shadow of Its Former Self' (Bob Liu, 26 October 2009) • Archive Team, 'GeoCities' (archiveteam.org) • Olia Lialina, 'A Vernacular Web' (2005, contemporary.archive.org)