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sigh But we should remember the social site of today is the GeoCities Site of the next decade. Though I think, despite the somewhat trite bleeps and blurps of t

sigh But we should remember the social site of today is the GeoCities Site of the next decade. Though I think, despite the somewhat trite bleeps and blurps of the GeoCities era, there was a bloody ton of innovation and invention that occurred in and around this product. It's passing is the end of an era. Chat rooms, personal websites, web based socialization all began in the likes of a GeoCities.

tlrobinson 17y ago
Yeah, there's really not much different in the taste of the creators of the average GeoCities page and MySpace profile, right down to the gratuitous animated GIFs.
- thaumaturgy 17y ago
  This incidentally is a great window into what the opinions of many consumers are when it comes to "good design".
  - chriskelley 17y ago
    I don't know if I'd call it their opinion on good design, rather I think the gauche output from non-designers is a product of lacking the ability to make/recognize anything better. I'm not a sculptor, and if I attempted to create a marble bust it would surely look terrible. That doesn't mean I think it's a good sculpture, it just means that's the best I know how to do, so it works for me. I do think that the bad design of these sites speaks more to the importance of "form after function". Maybe GeoCities pages were hideous, but they still enabled people to post their pictures/thoughts/etc in a way that most couldn't have figured out before that.
    - thaumaturgy 17y ago
      I agree with what you're saying, but I also think it leaves out the difference between an item appearing unfinished, and an item appearing gaudy. To extend your metaphor, you're not merely carving a marble bust, you're also gluing on trinkets and coating it with glitter and plastering it with stickers. I'm not at all dismissing the importance of MySpace and GeoCities and et al; I just think it's useful to look at them as a large body of research for the difference between professional and amateur design tastes.
ivankirigin 17y ago
The social site of today wants to be embedded deep into whatever the * of tomorrow is.

tlrobinson 17y ago

Yeah, there's really not much different in the taste of the creators of the average GeoCities page and MySpace profile, right down to the gratuitous animated GIFs.

thaumaturgy 17y ago
This incidentally is a great window into what the opinions of many consumers are when it comes to "good design".
- chriskelley 17y ago
  I don't know if I'd call it their opinion on good design, rather I think the gauche output from non-designers is a product of lacking the ability to make/recognize anything better. I'm not a sculptor, and if I attempted to create a marble bust it would surely look terrible. That doesn't mean I think it's a good sculpture, it just means that's the best I know how to do, so it works for me. I do think that the bad design of these sites speaks more to the importance of "form after function". Maybe GeoCities pages were hideous, but they still enabled people to post their pictures/thoughts/etc in a way that most couldn't have figured out before that.
  - thaumaturgy 17y ago
    I agree with what you're saying, but I also think it leaves out the difference between an item appearing unfinished, and an item appearing gaudy. To extend your metaphor, you're not merely carving a marble bust, you're also gluing on trinkets and coating it with glitter and plastering it with stickers. I'm not at all dismissing the importance of MySpace and GeoCities and et al; I just think it's useful to look at them as a large body of research for the difference between professional and amateur design tastes.

ivankirigin 17y ago

The social site of today wants to be embedded deep into whatever the * of tomorrow is.