We autists don't like change (at least this one does not)
The announcement of end of my blogging presence here was perhaps a little premature because it still has it's uses.
Yesterday I learnt from the BBC (not Yahoo incidentally) that Geocities is being buried.
This follows on the end of Lycos Europe which recently caused me to lament the ephemeral nature of the web.
Geocities might not be keeping up with Myspace and Facebook and the rest but it was where a lot of us cut our teeth. I would not have learned HTML without that impetus, and I guess this and the other free hosts out there provided us the first opportunities to get our message out to world and start connecting, via web rings (remember them) and cross linking.
Those who do not keep up with the times, who don't recularly update websites and move across platforms will be lost as when the plug is pulled a vast number of links will become dead including the most popular of mine.
Nowadays, however I do not rely upon free webhosting and pay for the space to host my old style website, which is all still there. Nothing is recession proof of course and eventually I may not be able to afford to maintain it, but at least I will be the one who kills it off, not someone else.
Most of the old Geocities sites may have been badly designed and essentially so much rubbish, but you can say the same for Myspace.
I guess nothing is permanent in the web world. Woolworths stood for nearly a hundred years. How much of the web as we know it today will still be here in 10 years time, even the lead applications of today such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and what have you, they rise up like flowers and are cut down. In ten years time blogging might be as much yesterdays application as geocities was. Enjoy it while you can.
4 comments:
That is weird to know Geocities is going away. I never much was one for having a website proper and HTML is a pain in the butt for me, but I did use Geocities from time to time.
Well, all things are transient, anyway. Some day the sun is going to go out. That's probably going to put a bit of a damper on whatever life is still kickin' in this solar system at that time... etc. No getting around transience. :)
There is a lot of good, old stuff on geocities. I am also sad they are going down. Geocities was hosting my first website, and it's how I learned about html and all that good stuff. But I guess they are outdated :(
My first website was on tripod, a property of the lycos network. I think that was over 11 years ago.
Your post brought back some huge memories.
sic transit gloria mundi wide web
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