Xanga ( / ˈ z æ ŋ ɡ ə / ) was a website that hosted weblogs , photoblogs , and social networking profiles . It was operated by Xanga.com, Inc. and based in New York City.
54-491: Xanga began in 1999 as a site for sharing book and music reviews. It became public in 2000, following a series of e-mail recruitment methods via GeoCities . Over the next few years, Xanga underwent several formatting changes. Featured Content was divided in 2002, being replaced by Premium and Classic views. Eventually, new profile features such as friends, "nudges", and chat forums that resemble Facebook were added, and video and audio capability were added in 2006. In 2013, Xanga
108-450: A credit card . Support for check payments was added on April 15, 2002, while support for PayPal was added on May 13, 2002. Support for gifting of Premium was added on December 23, 2001. The Premium Plus plan was added on November 8, 2005. Xanga Premium later increased to 10 GB of storage space. Xanga was largely supported by advertising, in the form of banner ads that appear on the top of most pages on Xanga. Xanga ads first appeared on
162-401: A 24% decrease from March 2008. In 2017, indie developer Jay Tholen created the game Hypnospace Outlaw , which was heavily influenced by GeoCities. In February 2022, NeoCities Neighborhoods , a remake of GeoCities, was created, featuring the same interface that the original 1996 version had. During 1999, a complaint was instituted against GeoCities stating that the corporation violated
216-652: A commercial website. It included the GeoStore, which sold GeoCities-branded merchandise. Users cashed in GeoPoints in the store. The domain geocities.com attracted at least 177 million visitors annually by 2008, according to a Compete.com study. ComScore stated that the GeoCities had 18.9 million unique visitors from the U.S. during March 2006. During March 2008, GeoCities had 15.1 million unique U.S. visitors; however, during March 2009, GeoCities had 11.5 million unique visitors,
270-417: A consent order was entered into, prohibiting GeoCities from misrepresenting the purpose for which it collects and/or uses personal identifying information from consumers. A copy of the complaint and order can be found at 127 F.T.C. 94 (page 94). GeoCities provided free home pages and e-mail address to children and adults who provided personally identifying and demographic information when they registered for
324-549: A day and getting more than six million monthly page views. GeoCities never enforced neighborhood-specific content; for example, a "Hollywood" homesteader could be nothing but a college student's home page. The company decided to emphasize increasing membership and community, and on December 15, 1995, BHI became known as GeoCities after having also been named Geopages. At that time GeoCities was headquartered at 9401 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, California . By December 1996, it
378-441: A default picture that would appear next to their username, as well as choose between their profile pictures in each entry. Then, on November 19, 2004, Xanga extended its support of multiple profile pictures to comment icons; now Xanga users could choose which profile picture they wanted to appear next to each of their comments. Then on April 6, 2006, Xanga upgraded its profiles to offer traditional social networking features—including
432-451: A feature that allows members to sample a Trial Subscription to another site. This update also allowed members to hide individual subscriptions from public display. Subscriptions were originally called "Sites I Read", sometimes abbreviated to "SIR". Until the spring of 2006, Xanga's photo features were focused on enabling photo uploads within weblog posts. Xanga first started offering photo uploading on May 1, 2001. Originally, photo uploading
486-516: A gigabyte of photo storage. On September 9, 2005, web-based batch uploading of photos was added; on September 26, 2005, all Xanga Classic members were given 1 gigabyte of free photo storage and Premium members were increased to two gigabytes of storage. On September 28, 2005, moblogging support was added. Xanga released its photoblog offering on April 6, 2006; the ability to comment on photoblog posts followed on April 28, 2006. On May 18, 2006, Xanga introduced new tools that streamlined batch publishing to
540-569: A photoblog. Xanga Videoblogs were officially launched on August 9, 2007 with a video featuring Xanga employee Chris Choi's dog Gromit. On September 29, 2006, Xanga launched Audio Blogs after about a month of beta testing. On February 22, 2007, Xanga introduced "Pulse", which was described as a "carefree miniblog". A Pulse message can also be uploaded by cell phone . Xanga supported limited profiles as early as its launch in 2000. Profiles were revamped on February 1, 2004, to hold more information and offer better email security and control. Each member
594-623: A service . Via microtransactions commonly known as " loot boxes ", a player can earn a random selection of in-game items, which may include skins and other cosmetic items of varying rarity. While often defended as being similar in practice to booster packs for collectible card games , researchers have deemed loot boxes to be "psychologically akin to gambling", and their inclusion in full-priced games have faced criticism from players for being an anti-consumer practice. They have largely been supplanted by " battle passes ", which are collections of in-game challenges and goals that unlock reward tiers over
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#1732863243355648-564: A short- or long-term period. Via the Steam platform, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2 also allow players to trade these items, which has led to communities devoted to bartering them for real-world money, as well as gambling . Firefox and Google Chrome either support or supported a form of theme. Firefox (and its sibling Thunderbird ) supports themes either through lightweight themes (formerly Personas ). Google Chrome version 3.0 or later allows themes to alter
702-421: A site using RSS and the ability to display subscriptions on one's site. Initially, Xanga allowed members to subscribe to each other's sites anonymously. Some users were troubled by anonymous subscriptions, and so during the week of July 15, 2003, support for this feature was discontinued. Since some users had been using anonymous subscriptions to try out subscriptions to other sites, on July 21, 2003, Xanga added
756-411: A user could give to another user's entry to show they enjoyed it. A core part of Xanga was the ability to subscribe to other Xanga Sites. Subscriptions allowed Xanga users to stay up-to-date on other Xangas they were subscribed to, without needing to manually visit each site. Xanga added an email subscriptions feature on November 30, 2000. In January 2001, this was followed by the ability to subscribe to
810-632: The NASDAQ exchange with the code GCTY. The initial public offering price was $ 17, increasing rapidly after the initial offering to a maximum of more than $ 100. By 1999 GeoCities was the third-most visited site of the World Wide Web, behind AOL and Yahoo! . The headquarters had been relocated to 4499 Glencoe Avenue in Los Angeles, near the Marina del Rey area of Los Angeles County . During January 1999, near
864-429: The X Window System . For those that do not, programs can add the functionality, like WindowBlinds for Microsoft Windows and ShapeShifter for macOS . Many websites are skinnable, particularly those that provide social capabilities. Some sites provide skins that make primarily cosmetic changes, while some—such as H2G2 —offer skins that make major changes to page layout. As with standalone software interfaces, this
918-472: The window decoration and the window . Themes are used to customize the look and feel of a piece of computer software or of an operating system . Also known as a skin (or visual style in Windows XP ) it is a custom graphical appearance preset package achieved by the use of a graphical user interface (GUI) that can be applied to specific computer software , operating system , and websites to suit
972-488: The Premium Plus plan provided unlimited photo storage and 1GB of monthly uploads. Premium members on both plans could customize their site using skins , post entries to their site via electronic mail , and download archives of their entries. Pages of Premium members did not contain web banners. Some other Premium features included a higher limit on profile pictures, a custom sidebar, and specialized page skins. Xanga Premium
1026-460: The URL unique (for example, "www.geocities.com/RodeoDrive/number"). Chat, bulletin boards, and other elements of "community" were added soon afterward, helping foster rapid growth. On July 5, 1995, GeoCities added additional cities, including "CapitolHill", "Paris", "SiliconValley", and "Tokyo". By December 1995, the company, which now had a total of 14 neighborhoods, was registering thousands of Homesteaders
1080-593: The ability to connect with friends, to search for friends, and to fill out profile fields. On June 6, 2006, a link to each users' profile was added to the standard Xanga navigation at the top of every Xanga site (along with Photos). Xanga profiles also include Memories, Nudge, and a Chatboard. Xanga offered two levels of premium subscriptions: Premium and Premium Plus . Members who subscribed to either service received additional features, including additional photo storage and monthly uploads. The Premium plan provided 2 GB of photo storage and 100 MB of monthly uploads while
1134-441: The appearance of the browser. Internet Explorer 5 and its immediate successor allowed the background picture of their toolbars to be customized. The most popular skins are for instant messaging clients , media center , and media player software , such as Trillian and Winamp , due to the association with fun that such programs try to encourage. Some platforms support changing the standard interface, including most using
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#17328632433551188-499: The basis for skins, also including non-gaming properties such as comic book characters, the National Football League , and musicians. Skins are sometimes distributed as part of downloadable content , and as pre-order incentives for newly-released games. In the 2010s, skins were increasingly deemed a virtual good as part of monetization strategies, especially within free-to-play games and those otherwise treated as
1242-515: The bottom right corner of the browser screen. Many users felt the watermark interfered with the design of their Web site and threatened to relocate their Web pages elsewhere. The implementation of the watermark preceded the widespread adoption of CSS and the standardized Document Object Model and had cross-browser problems. However, GeoCities said in a press release that feedback regarding the watermark had been overwhelmingly positive. The company became corporate during August 1998, being listed with
1296-401: The company decided to offer users (thereafter known as "Homesteaders") the ability to develop free home pages within those neighborhoods, with 2 MB of space provided at the time. During the registration process, new members chose to which neighborhood they wanted to belong. This neighborhood became part of the member's Web address along with a sequentially assigned "street address" number to make
1350-506: The data transfer limit for free accounts was said to be limited to 3 GB per month, but was enforced as a limit of about 4.2 MB per hour. The paid accounts were later unified in the Yahoo! Web Hosting service, with higher data transfer limits. During 2001, a rumor began that GeoCities was to be terminated; the chain e-mail making that claim cited an article in The New York Times that stated
1404-715: The desktop background. One method for dealing with this is to allow the user to select which parts of the theme they want to load; for example in Windows 98, users could load the background and screensaver from a theme, but leave the icons and sounds untouched. In video games , the term "skin" is similarly used to refer to an in-game character or cosmetic options for a player's character and other in-game items, which can range from different color schemes, to more elaborate designs and costumes . Skins are often awarded as unlockable content for completing specific in-game goals or milestones. Skins can sometimes include historical incarnations of
1458-540: The internet." Vijay Mukhi, an internet and cybersecurity expert quoted in the Business Standard , criticized Yahoo's management of GeoCities; Mukhi described GeoCities as "a lost opportunity for Yahoo!", adding that "they could have made it a Facebook if they wanted." Rich Skrenta , the CEO of Blekko , posted on Twitter an offer to take over GeoCities from Yahoo! in exchange for 50% future revenue share. In response to
1512-511: The likes of Tripod and Angelfire . By June 1997, GeoCities was the fifth most popular website on the Web, and by October of that year the company had registered its millionth Homesteader. During June 1998, in an effort to increase brand awareness, GeoCities introduced a watermark to user Web pages. The watermark, much like an onscreen graphic on some television channels, was a transparent floating GIF image that used JavaScript to stay displayed on
1566-514: The name of the site. Soon after its acquisition by Yahoo! , this practice was abandoned in favor of using the Yahoo! member names in the URLs. In April 2009, the company announced that it would end the United States GeoCities service on October 26, 2009. There were at least 38 million pages displayed by GeoCities before it was terminated, most user-written. The GeoCities Japan version of
1620-415: The name of the site. Soon after its acquisition by Yahoo!, this practice was abandoned in favor of using the Yahoo! member names in the URLs. During 1996, GeoCities had 29 "neighborhoods", which had groupings of content created by the "homesteaders" (GeoCities users). By 1999, GeoCities had additional neighborhoods and refocused existing neighborhoods. During 1999, GeoCities included GeoCities Marketplace,
1674-560: The opposite. On April 23, 2009, Yahoo! announced that it would be terminating its United States version of GeoCities, and stopped accepting new registrations, though the existing GeoCities accounts remained active. During late June 2009, Yahoo! updated the GeoCities home page to indicate: "GeoCities is closing on October 26, 2009." GeoCities joined a long list of other services discontinued by Yahoo, such as Farechase, LAUNCHcast , My Web, Audio Search, Pets, Photos , Live , Kickstart, Briefcase , Webmessenger, and Yahoo! Teachers . With
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1728-636: The original GeoCities URL formerly redirected to Yahoo! Small Business, but now redirect to the Yahoo! main page. Soon after the GeoCities termination announcement, the Internet Archive announced a project to archive GeoCities pages, stating "GeoCities has been an important outlet for personal expression on the Web for almost 15 years." Internet Archive made it their task to ensure the thoroughness and completeness of their archive of GeoCities sites. The former Web site InternetArchaeology.org also archived and showcased artifacts from GeoCities. The operators of
1782-651: The peak of the dot-com bubble , GeoCities was purchased by Yahoo! for $ 3.57 billion in stock, with Yahoo! taking control on May 28. The acquisition proved unpopular; users began to quit en masse in protest at the new terms of service specified by Yahoo! for GeoCities. The terms stated that the company owned all rights and content, including media such as pictures. Yahoo! quickly reversed its decision. During July 1999, Yahoo! switched from neighborhood and street addresses Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for homesteaders to "vanity" URLs through members' registration names to Yahoo! ("www.geocities.com/membername"). This service
1836-609: The player character (such as Insomniac Games ' Spider-Man , which includes unlockable skins based on Spider-Man 's past comic book and film appearances), as well as crossovers with other video games (such as Final Fantasy XIII-2 offering a costume based on Ezio Auditore from the Assassin's Creed franchise, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate offering costume items based on other video game characters for its customizable Mii Fighter characters). Fortnite Battle Royale has similarly featured extensive uses of licensed properties as
1890-428: The program more aesthetically pleasing, but others can rearrange elements of the interface, potentially making the program easier to use. Themes are often used to change the look and feel of a wide range of things at once, which makes them much less granular than allowing the user to set each option individually. For example, users might want the window-borders from a particular theme, but installing it would also alter
1944-499: The provisions of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 , specifically 15 U.S.C. § 45 , which states in relevant part, "Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful." The FTC found that GeoCities was engaged in deceptive acts and practices in contravention to their stated privacy act. Subsequently,
1998-435: The purpose, topic, or tastes of different users. As such, a skin can completely change the look and feel and navigation interface of a piece of application software or operating system. Software that is capable of having a skin applied is referred to as being skinnable , and the process of writing or applying such a skin is known as skinning . Applying a skin changes a piece of software's look and feel—some skins merely make
2052-427: The service endured until March 31, 2019. GeoCities began during mid-1995 as BHI, which stood for Beverly Hills Internet, a small Web hosting and development company in southern California. The company created its own Web directory , organized thematically as six so-called "neighborhoods". The neighborhoods included "Colosseum", "Hollywood", "RodeoDrive", "SunsetStrip", "WallStreet", and "WestHollywood". In mid-1995,
2106-468: The site Reocities downloaded as much of the content hosted on GeoCities as they could before it ended, in an attempt to create a mirror of GeoCities, albeit an incomplete one. Another site attempting to build an archive of defunct GeoCities sites is GeoCities.ws. There is no formal relationship between GeoCities and geocities.ws, as it is a completely different company. Many sites were duplicated automatically from GeoCities to geocities.ws many months after
2160-476: The site on May 30, 2001. On September 21, 2005, the ads were changed to a larger leaderboard format. GeoCities GeoCities , later Yahoo! GeoCities , was a web hosting service that allowed users to create and publish websites for free and to browse user-created websites by their theme or interest, active from 1994 to 2009. GeoCities was started in November 1994 by David Bohnett and John Rezner, and
2214-525: The termination of GeoCities in the U.S., Yahoo! no longer offered free web page hosting, except in Japan , where the service continued for ten more years. Yahoo! encouraged users to upgrade their accounts to the fee-based Yahoo! Web Hosting service. Rupert Goodwins, the editor of ZDNet , perceived the termination of GeoCities as an end of an era; he described GeoCities as "the first proof that you could have something really popular and still not make any money on
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2268-438: The termination of GeoCities. Geocities.ws also promised free hosting, and for eight years this has been the case, as of January 2018 . Other sites with this purpose were WebCite , as well as now-defunct Geociti.es (closed 2011), Oocities.org and Ge.ocities.org. On the first anniversary of GeoCities' termination, Archive Team announced that they would release a torrent file archive of 641 GB (prior to 7z compression, it
2322-522: The termination, rival Web hosting services began to compete for the sites formerly displayed by GeoCities. For instance, German Web host Jimdo started the "Lifeboat for GeoCities" service to encourage GeoCities users to display their sites on Jimdo. Geocities-closing.com , started by GeoCities competitor uCoz , is a similar project begun to save GeoCities websites. Many of the webpages formerly hosted by GeoCities remained accessible, but could not be updated, until 2014. Attempts to access any page using
2376-559: The website. At the time of the complaint, GeoCities had more than 1.8 million members who were "homesteaders". GeoCities illegally permitted third-party advertisers to promote products targeted to GeoCities' 1.8 million users, by using personally identifiable information obtained in the registration process. These acts and practices affected "commerce" as defined in Section 4 of the Federal Trade Commission. The problem of GeoCities
2430-400: Was allowed to upload one profile picture. On April 30, 2004, Xanga upgraded its profile image uploading to offer better quality images. Then on July 27, 2004, Xanga followed up with allowing the uploading of multiple profile pictures; classic members were allowed to upload up to 3 profile pictures, while Premium members were allowed to upload up to 99 profile pictures. Xangans were allowed to set
2484-495: Was approximately 900 GB of data), and did so on October 29, 2010. On April 9, 2011, Archive Team released a patch for the first GeoCities torrent. In its original form, site users selected a so-called "city" in which to list the hyperlinks to their Web pages. The "cities" were named after real cities or regions according to their content: For example, computer -related sites were displayed in "SiliconValley" and those dealing with entertainment were assigned to "Hollywood", hence
2538-476: Was available only to premium members, and was limited to 20 MB of storage (although this was not enforced). On April 7, 2005, Xanga overhauled its photo system to increase picture quality and size, as well as to increase capacity for the system overall. This was followed, on August 5, 2005, with the beta release of a new Photo Manager that allowed users to more easily edit and view their photos. On August 30, 2005, Xanga announced that all premium members would now get
2592-412: Was first launched on May 1, 2001, largely consisting of 20 MB of photo hosting (although limits on photos were not enforced). A downloadable archive of entries and comments was added to the premium offering on May 10, 2001, while customizable Skins were added on February 15, 2002. Payment options for Premium grew over time. When Premium first launched on May 1, 2001, Xangans could pay for Premium only with
2646-713: Was headquartered on the third floor of 1918 Main Street in nearby Santa Monica , with an office on the 8th floor of the Pershing Square Building at 125 Park Avenue in New York City . Over time, many companies, including Yahoo! , invested extensively in GeoCities and, with the introduction of paid premium services, the site continued to grow. During May 1997, GeoCities introduced advertisements on its pages. Despite negative reaction from users, GeoCities continued to grow compared to rivals. Competition in web hosting came from
2700-603: Was named Beverly Hills Internet briefly before being renamed GeoCities. On January 28, 1999, it was acquired by Yahoo! , at which time it was reportedly the third-most visited website on the World Wide Web . In its original form, site users selected a "city" in which to list the hyperlinks to their Web pages . The "cities" were named after real cities or regions according to their content: For example, computer -related sites were placed in "SiliconValley" and those dealing with entertainment were assigned to "Hollywood", hence
2754-413: Was not allowed to collect personal identifying information from any child if GeoCities had actual knowledge that the child did not have their parents' permission to provide the information. Skin (computing) In computing, a theme is a preset package containing graphical appearance and functionality details. A theme usually comprises a set of shapes and colors for the graphical control elements ,
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#17328632433552808-405: Was offered previously only as a premium. During 2001, amid speculation by analysts that GeoCities was not yet profitable (it having declared an $ 8 million loss for the final quarter of 1998), Yahoo! introduced a for-fee premium hosting service at GeoCities and reduced the accessibility of free and low-price hosting accounts by limiting their data transfer rate for Web page visitors; since that time
2862-569: Was that it placed a privacy statement on its New Member Application Form and on its website promising that it would never give personally identifying information to anyone without the user's permission. GeoCities sold personal information to third parties who used the information for purposes other than those for which members gave permission. It was ordered that GeoCities would not make any misrepresentation, in any manner about its collection or use of personal identifying information, including what information will be disclosed to third parties. GeoCities
2916-517: Was under threat of shutting down unless it raised $ 60k by mid-July (for "Xanga 2.0"). Failing to reach that goal, Xanga became an un-navigatable page in late 2013. Xanga members received a "Xanga Site", a website containing a weblog, photoblog, videoblog, audioblog, "Pulse" (mini-blog), and social networking profile. Members could also make or join blogrings (groups). Xanga first added weblogs to Xanga Sites on November 5, 2000. Comments were added soon after, on December 8, 2000, along with "eProps", which
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