Geocities closing?!!

[estrones]

I just heard today from a friend that Geocities is closing. I don't know if it is true or not, but her husband, who is a community leader, was told today.

Does anyone know if this is true? This friend is not the type to spring silly jokes, so I am wont to believe her. I must admit to being pretty shocked (and I use that word in the truest sense, and not as a substitute for surprised). I thought Geo were well nigh invincible.

I have a site there I use under my domain name.

What the heck is the world coming to?!

[Giancarlo]

That is an horrible joke, Geocities is never closing and I know someone who works for Yahoo that would tell me if it was.

[Tim]

GeoCities doesn't support the community leader program anymore, so your friend's husband probably wouldn't be getting information from Yahoo.

[Giancarlo]

Geocities would never close... they got money despite the downfall of many stocks. And there is an rebound going on, the Tech stocks have lifted past 2,000. Geocities is too old and too powerful to be shutdown. They put ads on the sites and that gets revenue, and they probably gets tons of money from that... right?

[Cagey]

Just heard the same rumor -- from a very reliable source -- I don't have anything there, but if you do I would back it up if you don't want to lose it in a hurry.

When Fortunecity's volunteer program went down, it went down fast. I realize that the volunteer program at Geo has been over for a long time, but they were still doing it informally and being suppported somewhat by Geo -- I wouldn't put my last dollar on Geo staying free -- that is for sure.

Cagey

[americazmostwanted]

i thought geo was under yahoos wing..?

the last time i was hosted by geo it sucked...
always got.. "Can't Find Page" crap!

so who really cares if they do close?

not me

[KNK]

I was jus thinking about this the other day ... "If geocities wereto close then truly FWP Are going to be thing of the past..." ... But I really highly doubt Geocities will every shut down .. they have been in the game for way to long and their backed up by many companies and have a good backing, so they shouldn;t have anything to worry about ... it's just some rumor that is spreading around.

[ISAfxp]

I don't think yahoo would ever stop Geocities .. itz part of the "Yahoo!-community". Yahoo must be the "only" internet company still making money.

[Cagey]

Just received this in -- part of a memo received by a Geocities Community Leader:


"Yahoo executives declined to specify which areas of
its service will be affected by the cutbacks. In
general, however, the company said the only areas
spared would be those that directly produced revenue
advertising, services to businesses and its new
fee-based services for consumers."

"Big areas of its site like the Geocities service,
which lets users build personal home pages are NOT
part of this new, narrower focus, even though they
contain some advertising. They will be closed."

[ISAfxp]

w00t!

And what about the free mail service ? Nah , itz not possible they will close that ... thatz how yahoo! became what they are now.

[rmsharpe]

GeoCities actually generated profits before Yahoo! took them over...even if Yahoo! drops GeoCities, they can still make it, maybe by teaming up with Altavista or some other Internet company.

[Cagey]

This certainly sounds like they are shutting down Geo:


"Big areas of its site like the Geocities service,
which lets users build personal home pages are NOT
part of this new, narrower focus, even though they
contain some advertising. They will be closed."
[/B][/QUOTE]

[<|R0cKm@nX|>]

but i dun really think geocities will say bye bye.
u c, there were ppl were bought more disk space from them and they have already earned money and worst if they say bye bye, wat happen to the ppl?

[meow]

I'm scared. Internet advertising is dead. HailStorm and micro payments are coming. Maybe there will soon be a price tag to everything. $3 a month for email service, $10 a year to be a member of a community like this. No freedom, no fun. :(

[Edited by meow on 04-28-2001 at 01:26 AM]

[angeth]

Originally posted by meow
I'm scared. Internet advertising is dead. HailStorm and micro payments are coming. Maybe there will soon be a price tag to everything. $3 a month for email service, $10 a year to be a member of a community like this. No freedom, no fun. :(

[Edited by meow on 04-28-2001 at 01:26 AM]

I have to agree with you, meow. I think maybe it's time that everyone stopped taking all the free services the internet gives us for granted. Click on a banner once a day. I've started doing it; I know one click won't make a difference, but if everyone did it once a day, then it would help.

[meow]

Not if you don't buy once in a while too.

Since I first heard about HailStorm I've been more observant. It's already everywhere. Especially the big places where all services used to be free. Yahoo is leading the way I think. Never liked Yahoo, but what Yahoo does others are bound to follow.

If it spreads so you have to pay a couple of bucks for everything the magic will be gone. We will be limited to the services and, worse, maybe the SITES we have paid for access to. Free information may be no more. :(

[bigperm]

Makes me wish there was a better ISP. Like AOL, but more friendly to people who really USE the internet. A ISP that you pay one flat monthly fee for, and you get like 50 megs, and all the extras, and other stuff too. That would rock.

[Webdude]

HailStorm? I havent heard of this yet. Well anyway, you would never have thought go and others would be shutting down their stuff either. Many of the publicly traded places will be shutting down free stuff due to them having to answer to their stock/share holders. Think about it, would you be a happy shareholder if the companies kept losing money, yet at the same time they are giving services away for free...and able to do so because of YOUR money?

There will still be plenty of private companies offering these free services. If you take a look around, you will notice a great many companies, such as wz, have chosen to remain privately held. It's funny that agencies are now offering to finance companies to go public. It's a good way to get a lot of money and it's good for the short term, but in the long run....it's better to find a way to survive at the private level. It's takes longer, but better in the long term.

So if your concerned about places like Geo shutting down, just look for the private companies. I know WZ cant possibly be the only company of it's type that found a way to become profitable. If it is, then I'm a damned genious, which I definitely am not...I'm sure there are plenty of them, you just have to find them since they dont advertise all over the net like the public companies do.

[meow]

:( Oh Dude. It's Microsoft's new plan for world dominance. That's what I'm scared of anyway. This isn't about web hosting. It's bigger than that. The big places closing their free hosts is only a part of it. I have been worried about the Web's future since I first heard about this and now I'm afraid it might have started.

Search and you will find a lot about HailStorm. It's more to this than the new Microsoft concept though. I fear that it can be setting the way of a whole new Internet era. "Micro payments" is the keyword. That can be a good thing, say for a guy like yourself, to be able to accept small payments for services. But it can also lead to that informational sites start start to take a fee. One buck is OK, two bucks are OK. But what if every big site we are used to go to for information start to do this?

Know Jacob Nielsen? http://www.useit.com/ He likes it. Figures. He has been on about Micro payments for ever. I use his site a lot, but I don't want to pay for information like this. After all, free information is what the Internet has been all about.

Check these URL's. They will give you a clue.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-5218479.html?tag=tp_pr
http://www.internetworld.com/news/archive/03272001d.jsp

A whole directory of HailStorm links:
http://www.thetwowayweb.com/directory/47

[atlas]

Paying isn't so bad. You don't have ads, things work reliably, and you get better support. I'm not ever going back to free hosting.

-mk

[TECGeek]

All these problems are being caused by an "economic slowdown"- the economy is a little shaky at the moment but hopefully by the end of this year towards the beginning of next it will pick back up and new things will appear-FWPs with only one popup (no names Virtual Avenue) namely. But I do agree with whoever said that we should click on a banner each time we go to a site. DO IT!