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It’s become the norm for big tech to acquire and kill off beloved products over the objections of passionate communities of users. For me that first experience

It’s become the norm for big tech to acquire and kill off beloved products over the objections of passionate communities of users. For me that first experience was Yahoo acquiring and killing GeoCities, not to mention deleting 10’s of millions of websites from the early web in the process like it never existed paving the way for social media. I’ve spent the better part of a decade waiting, and in 2020 Yahoo’s trademark for GeoCities was finally cancelled by the USPTO, I filed for it using geocities.eth, in part, and successfully became the new owner of the GeoCities registered trademark. There is a new era of passionate website builders that are making the Internet fun again and they have inspired me. You can find some of them at the .eth website search engine https://esteroids.eth.limo https://esteroids.eth.limo If things go as planned, it may just be a matter of time before you’ll have the opportunity to build a geocities website once again, only this time your website(s) won’t be able to be rugged.

Kye 4y ago
Amazing: you've used a thread about one of the freest, least commercial eras of the web to plug some cryptocurrency/web3 bullshit and admit you took over one of the most memorable trademarks of that era to do it.
- kristofferR 4y ago
  What is bullshit about decentralized hosting with IPFS?
  - Kye 4y ago
    The ephemerality was a feature we didn't understand was a feature back then. Not everyone dreams of a perfect distributed record of everything the way crypto people do.
    - throwawaycities 4y ago
      If you think self expression through building websites was ephemeral for dominant social media sandboxes, that is great, but not everyone feels that way. Sort of as evidenced by this post on the front page of HN more than a decade after GeoCities was killed off by big tech.
- throwawaycities 4y ago
  Free? You must have missed the part of the era where big tech purchased geocities for >$3B and killed it over the objections of users & deleted it from the Internet save for efforts of some like the Internet Archive (I hope you donate to them). Also must have missed the part about giving the IP to a community to govern. You did manage to confirm the unusual disdain of all things decentralized in web3.
  - alldayeveryday 4y ago
    > of the era where big tech purchased geocities for >$3B and killed it Pretty obvious that commenter was referring to before that happened.
    - dist1ll 4y ago
      Everything is free until it isn't.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
akarlsten 4y ago
What a shame that you're taking something beloved and nostalgic and turning it into yet another rent-seeking crypto project. https://neocities.org/ https://neocities.org/ has been around for years, is the same exact concept and doesn't come with any crypto-related baggage.
- kristofferR 4y ago
  To say that decentralized IPFS hosting and free custom domains (unlike on neocities where custom domains is a paid feature) is a negative is absurd. It's problematic that all Neocities cites are controlled by a commercial entity, that's exactly what killed Geocities. Decentralized hosting isn't "crypto-related baggage".
- throwawaycities 4y ago
  Rent seeking? Please enlighten me where you get rent seeking?
- elbigbad 4y ago
  I feel the same way. The hairpin of emotions from excitement when I saw something promising like acquiring the expiring geocities trademark from the USPTO to yet another shit crypto project was disheartening. Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. Perhaps something can do something of value with it when the new trademark expires.
  - throwaway_isms 4y ago
    >Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. Perhaps something can do something of value with it when the new trademark expires. Please expand upon this, give me your idea of victory and value. The plan was to turn the IP over to community governance, so people like you who seem to care could have a voice in governing how the property is used. On one hand it seems like you might want a voice in how the IP is used, yet you also seem to think that giving community governance over the GeoCities IP is "another shit crypto project." It is far easier just to privately own and operate the property as a centralized entity & remove the decentralized governance component. Has there been another crypto project that resurrected abandoned IP and turned it over to community governance? I'd love to review those other projects and see where they went wrong.
aposm 4y ago
You clearly know that snatching up the trademark for a beloved name and reusing it for a crypto project is going to be unpopular, given you took the time to make a throwaway account. So then why did you brag about your trademark, registered to your real name, which can be found in 30 seconds?
- throwawaycities 4y ago
  > given you took the time to make a throwaway account. This account is more than a year old. I make lots of HN accounts and typically stop using them after 500karma. Like I said web3 is not popular on HN, you don’t even know the project (nor do others) but show disdain anyway because it is “crypto”. That’s not a reflection on me and what I’m doing with GeoCities, but the a reflection on people that dislike a project not knowing what it is. FYI you’re on a platform that invests in startups, one of the most successful being a cryptocurrency exchange that went public and is responsible for the growth of cryptocurrency with the masses.
  - Kye 4y ago
    >> "FYI you’re on a platform that invests in startups, one of the most successful being a cryptocurrency exchange that went public and is responsible for the growth of cryptocurrency with the masses." The difference is YC has a long string of non-crypto successes. So when they do invest in crypto, people are less suspicious of it than they would be some random person plugging their crypto project. Coinbase fills a need created by the chaos of crypto, the very chaos that causes the problems people criticize it for, and it does so reigning in the BS and creating a safe space for the few useful (or at least innocent) things like speculative investing and exchange. It's not like a DAO where you're counting on someone to write a good Ethereum contract that won't be rules lawyered by someone to take all the money. At this point the only thing that distinguishes it from a real bank is it handles crypto. Even the USD is FDIC-insured! Try again.
    - throwawaycities 4y ago
      >Try again I don’t need to try again, I own the GeoCities trademark and IP. I’m really not sure what you are on about in terms of your hate for crypto & DAOs but love for Coinbase, whatever it is, your suspicion isn’t a reflection on me and what I’m doing with GeoCities, it’s a reflection of yourself. Good luck with all that. They say you haven’t made it until you have haters…so thanks for spending your time and energy confirming that I’ve arrived.

Kye 4y ago

Amazing: you've used a thread about one of the freest, least commercial eras of the web to plug some cryptocurrency/web3 bullshit and admit you took over one of the most memorable trademarks of that era to do it.

kristofferR 4y ago
What is bullshit about decentralized hosting with IPFS?
- Kye 4y ago
  The ephemerality was a feature we didn't understand was a feature back then. Not everyone dreams of a perfect distributed record of everything the way crypto people do.
  - throwawaycities 4y ago
    If you think self expression through building websites was ephemeral for dominant social media sandboxes, that is great, but not everyone feels that way. Sort of as evidenced by this post on the front page of HN more than a decade after GeoCities was killed off by big tech.
throwawaycities 4y ago
Free? You must have missed the part of the era where big tech purchased geocities for >$3B and killed it over the objections of users & deleted it from the Internet save for efforts of some like the Internet Archive (I hope you donate to them). Also must have missed the part about giving the IP to a community to govern. You did manage to confirm the unusual disdain of all things decentralized in web3.
- alldayeveryday 4y ago
  > of the era where big tech purchased geocities for >$3B and killed it Pretty obvious that commenter was referring to before that happened.
  - dist1ll 4y ago
    Everything is free until it isn't.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

akarlsten 4y ago

What a shame that you're taking something beloved and nostalgic and turning it into yet another rent-seeking crypto project. https://neocities.org/ https://neocities.org/ has been around for years, is the same exact concept and doesn't come with any crypto-related baggage.

kristofferR 4y ago
To say that decentralized IPFS hosting and free custom domains (unlike on neocities where custom domains is a paid feature) is a negative is absurd. It's problematic that all Neocities cites are controlled by a commercial entity, that's exactly what killed Geocities. Decentralized hosting isn't "crypto-related baggage".
throwawaycities 4y ago
Rent seeking? Please enlighten me where you get rent seeking?
elbigbad 4y ago
I feel the same way. The hairpin of emotions from excitement when I saw something promising like acquiring the expiring geocities trademark from the USPTO to yet another shit crypto project was disheartening. Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. Perhaps something can do something of value with it when the new trademark expires.
- throwaway_isms 4y ago
  >Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. Perhaps something can do something of value with it when the new trademark expires. Please expand upon this, give me your idea of victory and value. The plan was to turn the IP over to community governance, so people like you who seem to care could have a voice in governing how the property is used. On one hand it seems like you might want a voice in how the IP is used, yet you also seem to think that giving community governance over the GeoCities IP is "another shit crypto project." It is far easier just to privately own and operate the property as a centralized entity & remove the decentralized governance component. Has there been another crypto project that resurrected abandoned IP and turned it over to community governance? I'd love to review those other projects and see where they went wrong.

aposm 4y ago

You clearly know that snatching up the trademark for a beloved name and reusing it for a crypto project is going to be unpopular, given you took the time to make a throwaway account. So then why did you brag about your trademark, registered to your real name, which can be found in 30 seconds?

throwawaycities 4y ago
> given you took the time to make a throwaway account. This account is more than a year old. I make lots of HN accounts and typically stop using them after 500karma. Like I said web3 is not popular on HN, you don’t even know the project (nor do others) but show disdain anyway because it is “crypto”. That’s not a reflection on me and what I’m doing with GeoCities, but the a reflection on people that dislike a project not knowing what it is. FYI you’re on a platform that invests in startups, one of the most successful being a cryptocurrency exchange that went public and is responsible for the growth of cryptocurrency with the masses.
- Kye 4y ago
  >> "FYI you’re on a platform that invests in startups, one of the most successful being a cryptocurrency exchange that went public and is responsible for the growth of cryptocurrency with the masses." The difference is YC has a long string of non-crypto successes. So when they do invest in crypto, people are less suspicious of it than they would be some random person plugging their crypto project. Coinbase fills a need created by the chaos of crypto, the very chaos that causes the problems people criticize it for, and it does so reigning in the BS and creating a safe space for the few useful (or at least innocent) things like speculative investing and exchange. It's not like a DAO where you're counting on someone to write a good Ethereum contract that won't be rules lawyered by someone to take all the money. At this point the only thing that distinguishes it from a real bank is it handles crypto. Even the USD is FDIC-insured! Try again.
  - throwawaycities 4y ago
    >Try again I don’t need to try again, I own the GeoCities trademark and IP. I’m really not sure what you are on about in terms of your hate for crypto & DAOs but love for Coinbase, whatever it is, your suspicion isn’t a reflection on me and what I’m doing with GeoCities, it’s a reflection of yourself. Good luck with all that. They say you haven’t made it until you have haters…so thanks for spending your time and energy confirming that I’ve arrived.