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Yahoo buys GeoCities (1999)

money.cnn.com

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Re: Yahoo buys GeoCities (1999)

#91

Post by codeulike »

I had a Geocities site around 1999 and I remember that adverts started appearing on the site around that time. At first (if I remember correctly) it was opt-in, but then at some point they just started appearing anyway. Problem was, this was a long time ago when DOM-manipulation was not so easy, and with Geocities there was no common page template - and hence nowhere obvious to put adverts that would work for every geocities site. I think the solution they came up with was little floating pop-up windows that appeared over the top of the edges of the page. It looked ugly, and was also pretty buggy.

No one would make a blog/homepage site like Geocities these days without ringfencing somewhere to put the ads. How things have changed.

Re: Yahoo buys GeoCities (1999)

#92

Post by jonknee »

chris_wot wrote: post #69
InclinedPlane wrote: post #68

Fun fact: the stock used to buy GeoCities would still be worth billions of dollars, even if the vesting/lock-in schedule was extraordinarily long. Anyway, the interesting thing about a lot of the big late '90s dot-com acquisitions that now look like sheer insanity is that they were all a product of everyone latching onto what they thought the current "big thing" was. Back then it was portals, aggregation, hosting, an…

What will the Instagram acquisition look like in 10 years time?

With the way FB's stock is going it will look cheaper and cheaper.

Re: Yahoo buys GeoCities (1999)

#93

Post by joshuahedlund »

jacquesm wrote: post #56

If you had a site on geocities you can probably still get it from either the Archive team torrent or from http://reocities.com/ , simply append your old url. There is a 'self service' bit (see the FAQ) where you can archive your website and have a download link mailed to you. It's been running for a few years now and gets approximately 35K unique visitors daily. From a commercial point of view it is a complete failur…

If you can't find it on reocities, try http://oocities.com as well. No idea which generally has more or if they both have pretty solid collections. My lame 12-year-old music fan site is preserved on both!

Re: Yahoo buys GeoCities (1999)

#94

Post by bitwize »

dietrichepp wrote: post #87
jacquesm wrote: post #56

If you had a site on geocities you can probably still get it from either the Archive team torrent or from http://reocities.com/ , simply append your old url. There is a 'self service' bit (see the FAQ) where you can archive your website and have a download link mailed to you. It's been running for a few years now and gets approximately 35K unique visitors daily. From a commercial point of view it is a complete failur…

Ugh. I think my old page had a "Free Kevin Mitnick" banner next to an animated gif that said "Made with Macintosh". Not that these clues narrow it down very much, if you want to find my page.

Hack the planet, dude. :)

Re: Yahoo buys GeoCities (1999)

#95

Post by theycallmemorty »

viraj_shah wrote: post #48
dewitt wrote: post #14

I worked for Tripod.com back in the day, which eventually sold to Lycos for about $60M, just a few months before Yahoo bought Geocities for $3.6B. Needless to say, maybe we should have held out a bit longer. The late 90's were a strange time indeed.

Remember Angelfire as well?

It seems www.angelfire.com still exists in some sense... redirects to angelfire.lycos.com although it doesn't appear to be free.

Re: Yahoo buys GeoCities (1999)

#96

Post by dredmorbius »

citricsquid wrote: post #38
untotal wrote: post #34

Oh, those heads days! That a "website" could be bought for $3bn+ prodded a lot of young employees to say "WTF, let me quite my job and make a website.com". I should know, because I was one of them.

did you get rich? :)

Based on username, not.

Re: Yahoo buys GeoCities (1999)

#97

Post by aitkin »

viraj_shah wrote: post #48
dewitt wrote: post #14

I worked for Tripod.com back in the day, which eventually sold to Lycos for about $60M, just a few months before Yahoo bought Geocities for $3.6B. Needless to say, maybe we should have held out a bit longer. The late 90's were a strange time indeed.

Remember Angelfire as well?

Expages, anyone??

Re: Yahoo buys GeoCities (1999)

#98

Post by Kequc »

duaneb wrote: post #55
gingerlime wrote: post #37

" In a separate announcement, GeoCities posted a net loss of $8.4 million, or 27 cents a share, for the fourth quarter ended, compared with losses of $3 million, or 14 cents a share in the year-ago period. Revenue for the three month period rose 341 percent to $7.5 million. For the year, the company lost $19.8 million, or 71 cents per share, compared to a net loss of $8.9 million, or 44 cents a share, in 1997. " and…

Ah Instagram, Facebook, twitter, tumblr... You really think that all the google ads you've seen in your life (let alone on a given site) add up to a return of $15? I'd be much more likely to give geocities $15 for a premium account than I would be to ever click on an ad. This space can be lucrative, but every success is over the bodies of many failed companies. This phase we're in now is equally silly.

> I'd be much more likely to give geocities $15 for a premium account than I would be to ever click on an ad.

I really wish this was a more common attitude.

You could make it happen for less than $15. At a value of $1/CPM to a website owner displaying one ad. $5 would cover one user for ~5,000 page views. ~10,000 page views taking into account the 50% of users using adblock today, value equal to double.

Imagine you pay $5 for every 10,000 page views on previously adverted sites and the money was distributed among those websites you visited.

Re: Yahoo buys GeoCities (1999)

#100

Post by roasm »

scrapcode wrote: post #88
jacquesm wrote: post #56

If you had a site on geocities you can probably still get it from either the Archive team torrent or from http://reocities.com/ , simply append your old url. There is a 'self service' bit (see the FAQ) where you can archive your website and have a download link mailed to you. It's been running for a few years now and gets approximately 35K unique visitors daily. From a commercial point of view it is a complete failur…

Is there anything like this for Homestead.com? I can't remember any Geocities URL's

Homestead is still up and running, though we did start culling sites that had no visits and no logins a while ago.

(I was a co-founder of Homestead.)

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