Not with a bang, but with a whimper. Yahoo! is unceremoniously closing GeoCities, one of the original web-hosting services acquired by Yahoo! in 1999 for $2.87 billion. (Fun venture fact: Fred Wilson’s Flatiron Partners was an investor). In a message on Yahoo!’s help site, the company said that it would be shuttering Geocities, a free web-hosting service, later this year and will not be accepting any new customers. Existing customers will still be able to access use GeoCities but Yahoo! is encouraging these customers to upgrade to Yahoo!’s paid Web Hosting service.
GeoCities’ traffic has been falling over the past year. According to ComScore, GeoCities unique visitors in the U.S. fell 24 percent in March to 11.5 million unique visitors from 15.1 million in March of 2008. Back in October, 2006, it had 18.9 million uniques.
There are plenty of other Website creation and hosting services out there, including blog platforms such as Wordpress, Blogger, and Typepad, as well as Website creation and hosting services such as Ning, Webs, Jimdo, Snapages, Weebly, and countless more. GeoCities never really kept up with the times, but always remained a decent pageview generator.
One of the pioneers of web-hosting sites, GeoCities gave users personal publishing tools and created “neighborhoods” within its web platform for users to be able to create pages, add a picture, text, a guest book and a website counter. Long before MySpace, Geocities was known as a place where teenagers, college students, and eventually others could impose their own garish taste upon the rest of the world.
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Search engine Ask is reverting to its original name, Ask Jeeves, as it reintroduces the iconic fictional butler into its corporate branding.
Jeeves was dropped from the brand in 2006 as the search engine began a series of facelifts aimed at increasing market share and gaining on Google.
At the time there was a brief campaign from users to have him reinstated.
Ask says the return of the valet, based on a character created by PG Wodehouse, is in response to “user demand”.
Managing director Cesar Mascaraque denied the rethink was a last-ditch effort to gain ground on market leader Google.
“We have seen a growth of 20% this year, so we are not struggling,” he said.
“We have been focused on developing an outstanding producer that will deliver outstanding results and Jeeves is just the icing on the cake.
“Our aim is to give our users the answers they need for the lives they lead and Jeeves’s role is to give our users answers in a more human way.”
But Peter Matthews, manager of the brand and digital consultancy Nucleus, said Ask needed to put some clear blue water between itself and Google.
“Ask is struggling, as all search engines other than Google are,” he said.
“With Google, you get 90% of the market, so the other search engines – Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Ask to name but a few – are all trying to grab a share of the remaining 10%.”
The search engine has been through a series of rebrands, including a TV advertising campaign portraying it as an underground alternative to Google.
In the autumn of 2008 it had another makeover, this time branding itself as the search engine that could best answer specific questions.
Mr Matthews added: “Ask Jeeves was quite a strong brand, in the sense it had brand values that were different from everyone else.
“Ask without Jeeves lacked character and while the actual product – searching the web – is very effective, in trying to be more like Google they shot themselves in the foot.
“The opportunity for Jeeves would be to get the site to be used as it was first intended – not by putting in a few key words, but by asking it a proper question.
“Not only have they got a brand issue, but they need to be famous for answering questions rather than producing reams of search results.”
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At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, internet guru Tim O’Reilly threw out the possibility that perhaps the name should be changed.
He said he and his friend John Battelle of Federated Media had been playing around with an alternative which was Web 2.0 + World = Web Squared.
When I asked Mr O’Reilly if he loved or hated the name Web 2.0 that he popularised, he let out a big sigh and said “Awww does it have to be one or the other?”
Eventually he admitted “I love it and I hate it. It’s a term that has been very effective and very successful in getting across an idea. I spent a long time talking about that idea around the turn of the Millenium, talking about building the internet operating system. It didn’t catch on and all of a sudden we had this new term Web 2.0 and everyone got it so how could you not love that?”
In the end he said “I have mixed feelings about it. I am delighted with its effectiveness, it did what I wanted it to do. To catalyse the industry after the dotcom bust that things weren’t over and that something mattered about the companies that had survived. They knew something that the others didn’t. And I think that continues to be true.
“The companies that are succeeding today understand better than others what it means to be building software in the age of the internet.”
As to really getting behind Web Squared, Mr O’Reilly said “It was just one of these idle thoughts where you go dub dub dub and then you go one more w and that gets you to web squared, right?”
My unscientific research on the expo floor found more people hating than loving the Web 2.0 title.
Paul Thompson said “Keep it. It hasn’t been around for very long and you need a few years to build an identity. If you replace it with Web Squared, people will go what happened to Web 2.0?”
Mark Kirthcart thought “it’s sounding a little dated and overused.”
Sindee Thomson’s view was “Web 3.0 will be here soon.” For her, Web Squared was a total no no. “I hate it. It reminds me of mathematics and I was never good at my sums. I think it should be Web Cubed.”
Brooklynn Morris was a big fan. “I think Web 2.0 is a great title but I think people don’t like titles in general especially when it gets in the way of free concepts.”
Kevin Marshall said he thought people were “tired of Web 2.0 because of all the hype around it. Web Squared however, I don’t think is any better.”
Alistair Mitchell suggested that instead of Web Squared it should be “Web Shared because the web today is all about sharing – sharing the content of your life through things like Flickr, Facebook, where you live, where you are and how you work.”
Taomas Rio said “Web 2.0 is too techy. Sure the core of people who come here know what it means but the internet is always evolving so why do you need versions or numbers to categorise it?”
As for Web Squared, Taomas was aghast. “Oh no that’s web weird!”
Any better suggestions?
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Posted in Ideas, Internet, Web 2.0 | 4 Comments »
