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Hello, friends,

Today's revelation reminds us of a Boyz 2 Men song...you know, about the end of the road? GeoCities, you belonged to us, we belonged to you--but as of today, you will suffer the worst indignity of the internet: deletion.

No Archives for You!
Encouraged to transfer their sites to Yahoo!'s five dollar a month hosting sevice, GeoCities users will move it or lose it later today, effectively ending an internet era many of us remember with as much fondness for its cringe-worthy graphics as its sense of community and togetherness. Although an organization called the Archive Team's Geocities Project is working hard to salvage as many of the pages as possible, the "internet relic," as mashable called it, will likely disappear into oblivion with tonight's setting sun. Once one of the most visited domains of the internet, GeoCities languished after Yahoo! acquired them in 1999 when they were the world's number three website.

The Way We Were
GeoCities, like the Boyz 2 Men song we were talking about earlier, brings to mind a simpler time, when "Under Construction" GIFs were ubiquitous and less frustrating, when websites with a front page reading "Taller Women and Shorter Men" were enough to make us smile and forward a link. Now we're completely irritated if anything other than the Apple Store is down for even a minute, and YouTube videos are the least complicated entertainment we require. In the few short years between its inception and its closure, GeoCities went from leading the pack in what was effectively the first social networking circles online to becoming an under-used, under-updated fossil field.

Another One Bites the Dust
GeoCities isn't Yahoo!'s only recent casualty. In addition to killing off the much loved if oft-neglected websites there, Yahoo!'s diet has forced them give up Yahoo 360 and My Web as well. Given that GeoCities may never have been cash flow positive its closure makes a little more sense, but still, we're losing a big part of the history of the internet as well as our culture with its going. Hopefully the Archive Team has used the months since the announcement to work tirelessly to get some of the most interesting specimens into a internet museum of sorts...at the very least, we want to be able to open a virtual time capsule in ten years and marvel at how many people loved the BackStreet Boys.

Lament your losses with us on Twitter!

Till tomorrow, Newsies...