Today marks the BBC-proclaimed "end of an era for early websites" as Yahoo! shut down GeoCities. One of the original sites to give web users the ability to build and own a website, it was "an important outlet for personal expression and the web for almost 15 years" according to the Internet Archive.
What I found interesting in the BBC's article, was this brief paragraph:
"Yahoo-owned GeoCities once boasted millions of users and was the third most popular destination on the web. The free site has since fallen out of fashion with users, who have switched to social networks."
This led me to reflect on the rise and fall of websites. Research suggests that humans value fresh ideas, and combined with that and advances made in technology, it is not a surprise that GeoCities has gone down the flusher. An
interesting article published on the New Scientist website suggests that the talent versus experience argument matters the most in deciding what websites will be (and may remain) successful.
So GeoCities is now virtual ancient history because social networks have trumped it. Google is the number one search engine but bing are hoping to rival it and one day win the blue ribbon in the search engine race. Twitter's developments have forced Facebook's developers to change parts of their coding. iPhone's have sparked a whole new wave of app's and the popularity contest continues to be documented online. The
media's attention to certain websites have certainly assisted the rise of recent websites, but who's going to be the next GeoCities then? Humans are fickle and crave the latest and greatest, so it would seem that no website is safe. A video I found on YouTube depicts then rise and fall of website popularity in Australia. Your thoughts on this subject are welcome!
