What Geocities Taught Me About Connection and the Web

I visited many, many Geocities sites, but I never had one of my own; I was too young, I think, to really understand how to build one myself. But now that I have built my career on designing and developing for the Internet, I realize just how powerful Geocities was.

This was a way of carving out a space for yourself—a home—in what then felt like the amorphous and undefined ether of the Web. Geocities gave you space to build whatever you wanted, and let you build it in a “neighborhood” that reflected your interests. Today it’s remembered mostly for its aesthetics—the GIFs, the graphics, the primitive design—and it’s easy to forget just how novel it was to be able to design something yourself, and theoretically show it to people all over the world.

Site counters delivered a sense of visibility. Thinking about it today, this was a precursor to the likes, follows and shares that so many of us chase now—but the beauty of the site counter was that you never knew who was visiting. There was no expectation of huge reach. You were satisfied with the numbrs ticking upwards one by one because it meant that people were seeing what you made... even if most of those views were you and your friends.

Geocities was a way to make something for yourself—and to share it with people who found it interesting, too. In a time when the Internet can feel like an isolating, polarizing and deeply pessimistic place, there’s something to be learned from the possibilities for creativity and community this space once presented... and the earnestness that came along with all of it.