A Milestone Goes Unmarked
Dateline: 11/17/97 - Weekly feature from your Guide To Personal Web Pages
This month marks the third birthday of GeoCities, the free homepage provider that just notched its one-millionth "homesteader" a few weeks ago.
[Yawn]
Such was the reaction of the media, online and off, to what seems to me to be a fairly momentous milestone in the history of the Web. Sheesh -- even GeoCities' own site fails to contain a press release on either topic.
Perhaps it has given up on trying to get the professional media to cover personal Web publishing with any kind of respect, much less diligence. Cyberspace reporters who drool over every faddish discussion list and Suck imitator -- remember the overkill coverage of Burning Man, an event where reporters nearly outnumbered attendees? -- appear uninterested in why a scant million Netizens call GeoCities home.
I can't think of anything else on the Web that matches GeoCities' growth record. In its first year, 10,000 homesteaders signed up. But then the pace began to accelerate sharply. The number jumped to 50,000 in the spring of '96 and then doubled to 100,000 that summer. By April '97 there were 500,000 members. Just six months later (October '97), the 1-million threshold was crossed.
Here come the gripes
It's easy to forget what a wonderful idea GeoCities founder David Bohnett had in offering free space to people who agreed to place their homepages in themed "neighborhoods." Now that there are numerous other free or low-cost webspace providers, it's become standard fare to dump on GeoCities. Some of the most common complaints:
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What, no CGI scripts?
Why is it so hard to get my page featured?
Why can't I have subdirectories?
Are these content guidelines for real?
There's a sense that GeoCities may have become too big for its britches. Is there a point where the size of GeoCities become a turnoff, both to homepagers and surfers?
It's true that while GeoCities often appears on the top 10 list of Web "destinations" as measured by Media Metrix and others, it could do a much better job organizing itself, starting with the search function. Promotion efforts too often highlight mundane, lowest-common-denominator content. And it needs to improve site sweeping to get rid of dead pages and sites that are merely redirections.
I also wish GeoCities had more courage when it comes to controversial pages. Too often, it seems a few complaints are enough to get a page pulled.
Why GeoCities matters
But I'm still an ardent fan.The GeoCities story encapsulates the growth and excitement of the homepage phenomenon. Where else can you hear a million unmediated voices? There's also wonderful content; I know because I've featured GeoCities homesteaders many times.
So here's a tip of the hat to David Bohnett. The professionalism of GeoCities lent credence to the self-publishing movement at a critical moment in Net history, when it looked like corporations were going to overrun the people's medium.
Perhaps that's why whenever I see GeoCities listed as a top Web destination, it feels like a personal victory.