Farewell GeoCities

When Yahoo users typed geocities.com on October 26, they got a one line
banner message said-‘GeoCities is closing down’. In
fact, in an email sent out on July 17, 2009, Yahoo had said, "Dear
Yahoo! India GeoCities customer, We're writing to let you know that
Yahoo! India GeoCities, our free web site building service and
community, is closing on October 26, 2009. We have enjoyed hosting
GeoCities web sites created by Yahoo! users all over the world, and
we're proud of the community you've built. However, we have decided to
focus on helping our customers get online with our other great hosting
service, Yahoo! Small Business. On October 26, 2009, your GeoCities
site will no longer appear on the Web, and you will no longer be able
to access your GeoCities account and files."



This move has sent mixed signals in the cyberspace. For long many
things in the web have remained free, while all providers have pay
services- the free hosting has remained an ideal platform for users to
share and connect with friends and also gave an opportunity of owning a
website. But this plain vanilla web hosting concept seemed to have
undergone the typical ‘Video killed the Radio Star
syndrome’. J



Just like RJs were marginalized with Music TV, the social networking
sites have
cannibalized on these free web hosting services and it’s
claimed a victim as big as GeoCities. As per reports available the
displaced ‘Geocitizens’ can find a new online home
by purchasing Yahoo’s paid webhosting for a introductory
offer of $5 for a year of hosting. Pretty smart strategy assuming that
a small population of millions of free users opt for this introductory
offer will translate into huge revenues for its paid hosting.



In the last one year Yahoo is trying to re-invent itself to the
changing market dynamics with Social networking becoming a disruptive
development and clearly the older dot.com models and strategies are a
passé. For instance, Yahoo acquired GeoCities for a whopping
$4.6 billion a decade ago and one of the pioneers in building online
communities at the height of the dotcom boom. Many see the closure of
GeoCities as part of the series of ‘road to
profitability’ strategy initiated by Yahoo’s CEO
Carol Bartz who took over the online giant in January 2009. Bartz has
initiated a range of cost cutting measures. Bartz as head of design
software major Autodesk prior to joining Yahoo is seen a turnaround
executive. Bartz was credited for accelerating Autodesk’s
revenues from a mere $300 million to a $1.5 billion enterprise in her
13 year sojourn. So clearly the mood at Yahoo is to cut on the freebie
services like GeoCities and focus on new services that can get more
advertising and subscription revenues.



GeoCities closure comes close on the heels of Yahoo shutting down its
Video sharing service-‘Jumpcut’ in June 2009. It
also sold its stake in Gmarket to eBay, a South Korean ecommerce
company some time back to raise about $120 million. Looking at all
these parleys Yahoo is inclined to focus more on its fundamentals and
exiting all the peripheral opportunities it forayed over the last few
years.



Coming back to GeoCities closure, the site will not allow new users and
the existing users can continue to use the services for a while till
Yahoo announces a strategy for users to retrieve their data from the
sites. Nevertheless it’s a sad day for the internet boomers,
who rode on such great service and its absence in the days ahead is
sure to create a void and it would be good idea to take your GeoCities
site screenshot and hang it your drawing room as a souvenir.