Hi, Thanks for writing. I tried to add the following into your guestbook and was refused. It may be long or something. I'll add a shorter version there.
I'm a Geocities Community Leader and I want to say that I still think Geocities has the potential of being the best free Web Site Host on the Net. I speak not as an enemy of Geocities, but as a member of the huge growing number of Geocitizens who are seriously considering going to Xoom or some other server.
By my count, Geocities has has lost about a thousand members due to the pop-up ads and the watermark. Mine is a very conservative estimate.
And it isn't just the number of people leaving that is troubling, its the people them selves. Those whose sites consist of "Me and my cat Fluffy" do not seem overly concerned. The people who are leaving tend to be those who take their web sites seriously, who invest hour after pains taking hour to create a showplace for their ideas, who create great graphics, offer in-depth essays and so on. In short, it is the best of the best who are leaving for the most part. It is those pages which make Geocities such a great cyber community which are leaving. I urge everyone to write to Geocities and express your displeasure with these intrusions.
Sarcastic remarks will not do any of any good. What Geocities needs to understand is that they are driving away the very sites they seek to attract.
What else can you do? Well, first things first. Take the watermark and pop-ups off of your site.
Next, add an anti watermark watermark onto your page such as:
Again, I wish to say to everyone who reads this that I support
Geocities and consider myself a
member of the Loyal Opposition. I sincerely hope that Geocities is broad
minded enough not to
censor me nor remove my CL status. I want Geocities to be the best place
on the web to build a site,
free or not. The pop-ups, and especially the FLOATING watermark is
destroying Geocities and
empowering their competitors like XOOM, Fortune City, Tripod, Angel Fire
etc. Friends with
other web site hosting services, included the ones I mention here, say
that the watermark is the best
thing that ever happened for their companies. They are growing by leaps
and bounds and Geocities
refugees immigrate to their servers. I sincerely hope the powers that be
at Geocities realize this
before they become just another provider.
--
Jagannath Prakash
Geocities Athens Community Leader
Jaganath@concentric.net AIM: jaganatha
This response has been printed exactly as I received it, except I deleted one little
part that contained the NOSCRIPT tag, because I didn't want to screw up the HTML. The
response is (c)1998 Jagannath Prakash. (Try saying that name 3 times fast!)
