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WebRing Rescues Endangered GeoCities Sites

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ASHLAND, Ore., May 19, 209 — Before MySpace and Facebook,
GeoCities reigned supreme when it came to personal websites.
With its simplicity of use and free form, GeoCities
Pagebuilder enabled anyone to create their very own site.
The result was millions of web pages built by individuals,
both novice and expert, from nearly every nation on the
planet. Those pages are now facing extinction.

In April 2009, Yahoo! quietly announced that they would be
closing GeoCities forever. Yahoo! did not state a closing
date, nor did they issue any formal announcement about the
closure. Only the most active GeoCities members learned
about the planned closure when they edited their sites.
With the recent launch of WebRing‘s free Webspace, the
timing of the GeoCities closure couldn’t have been better
for their members. WebRing’s free Webspace allows anyone to
easily create a website of their own, and add it to one or
more topical WebRing communites (rings). WebRing offers its
free members 50 MB worth of space to store files and to host
their site, while premium members are allotted 1 GB.

“We recognize that most owners of these GeoCities sites are
unaware that they are about to lose their sites forever,”
said Tim Killeen, owner of WebRing, Inc. “That’s why we’re
being pro-active and reaching out to every one of our
affected members.”

“We’re excited about the opportunity this provides members
to realize the vision that we at WebRing had, when we were
acquired by GeoCities in 1998, which was to enable website
owners to create communites and connect with people,” added
Killeen.

WebRing is providing their members help with moving their
GeoCities sites over to their free Webspace by offering
whatever assistance they can.

WebRing’s Marketing Coordinator, Kyle Stich, notes, “Many
GeoCities sites pre-date the social networking boom. They
often contain a wealth of information, colorful pages about
hobbies, family and friends and are teeming with passion for
their subject.”

Such sites include a wide variety of self-published poems,
stories and artwork as well as tributes to entertainers,
games and authors and photo galleries commemorating births,
weddings and other celebrations.

The date of final closure has not yet been announced. Some
sources cite the end of summer. Whatever the date, unless
the sites are moved, they will cease to exist. To date,
hundreds of GeoCities members have already uploaded their
pages to WebRing Webspaces.

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