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26 Apr 2011 21:43

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Tech: Friendster throws its old, forgotten friends out on the curb

  • Your emotions get wrapped up in it. It reflected a particular moment in time in our lives.
  • Former Friendster user Jim Leija • Reflecting with sorry about the site’s decision to delete information stored on the site by its early users since the heady days of 2003. The current site, which allows people to store photos, blog posts and comments, will become an entertainment-focused site along the lines of MySpace, but with a focus on their current Asian stronghold. For folks like Leija, who met his partner Aric Knuth on the site, the death of the current Friendster is bittersweet. “All of our early exchanges were with each other through their messaging systems. We were writing early love notes back in the winter of 2003.” Fortunately, if Leija wants to keep his old data, Friendster created an app to do just that. (BTW, the NYT quoted Jason Scott — who’s kind of the internet archivist du jour and doesn’t like the cloud for this very reason.) source

26 Oct 2009 20:08

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Tech: Give Jason Scott a high-five for his hard work saving Geocities

  • You’re stupid and I hate you. I haven’t even met you, don’t even know where you are or what else you do, and I hate you. … This has to have been one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done, and it’s your fault.
  • Geocities archivist Jason Scott • On his frustration with Yahoo over their closing of the iconic site. He notes the company’s shortsightedness in taking a historic service and throwing it out the window – and worse, not helping Scott’s Archive Team with the process. The message, in our view is epic and vitriolic. As it should be. Our favorite part: “So now in two days you’re going to shut this place down, this collection of genealogy and pages by people who’ve died and collections of writing and art and music and you’re going to turn it into dust because Carol Bartz said Yahoo needed to save a few bucks.” Throw this guy $25 so he can keep doing what he’s doing. He deserves it. • source

28 Apr 2009 08:29

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Tech: Nerds are working to preserve your crappy Geocities site

  • Yahoo’s closing it, so they’re working fast. Jason Scott has made it his mission, at least since Yahoo announced that they’re closing Geocities, to download old pages from the site to preserve them for history. The software he’s set up downloads five sites a second and has downloaded over 200,000 so far. They’re grabbing as much as they can but it’s a little tough to be comprehensive with such a highly-used service. And if you’re curious about the overall structure of Geocities, nerdlinger, click the link, because Scott goes into it in great detail. Ah, Geocities: The pet rock of the ’90s. source