tRIPod: Lycos (Europe) Shuts Down a Pioneering Web Service

By  |  Sunday, January 18, 2009 at 11:36 am

Tripod Logo[UPDATE: TechCrunch has updated the post I link to below to clarify that it’s Lycos Europe, a separate company, that’s shutting down Tripod. Lycos and Tripod in the U.S. are separate entities and presumably not affected–but I’m still feeling nostalgic…]

Most of the scads of Web services that are dying lately have met their end at an early age, and usually before they’d accomplished much of anything. But over at TechCrunch, Michael Arrington has reported that Lycos is shutting down its Tripod site-publishing service (as well as Lycos Mail). That’s like hearing that a celebrity from way back when–one who you weren’t ever sure was still with us–is dying in poverty.

Back in the mid 1990s, Tripod and its archrival, GeoCities, were extremely easy, extremely popular ways to put together extremely basic Web sites for free. (Both paid your way by putting ads on your site.) Here’s what Tripod looked like in 1996, courtesy of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine:

Tripod in 1996

During the original Web acquisition frenzy, Tripod was bought by Lycos and GeoCities was bought by Yahoo…and over the years, bot were rendered largely superfluous by blogs, social networks, services like Yahoo Groups, and other methods of getting on the Web without a lot of work. I guess that the fact that Tripod is still extant means that there are folks who still find it useful–and those people will apparently have to find new homes for their homepages.

I was never a Tripod user and hadn’t given it a millisecond of thought in eons, but it’s still kind of sad to see it go. Another Web page builder from back in the day, AOL’s Hometown, died a few months ago. GeoCities lives on, though. And I’m not sure what’s happening to Tripod’s longtime sister service Angelfire, which I was even more startled to find was still in business.

 
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5 Comments For This Post

  1. Relyt Says:

    What about freewebs?

  2. Andrew Says:

    It is very important to note that only Tripod Europe and Lycos Mail Europe will be shut down. But Lycos Europe is not the same company as the Lycos we all know in the USA. As a matter of fact, http://www.Tripod.com (the USA version owned by Lycos Inc.) is not only alive but well. Same goes for mail.

    The TechCrunch article is misleading.

  3. David A. Sampayo Says:

    Oh my, how sad I was to hear this. I used Tripod way, way back in the day to make my own first little site. It was such a great feeling. Hated the ads, but I was so proud to give out that URL. Felt like I was so futuristic. Mind you, this is back before blogging became easier than making toast, so it was a big deal 🙂

  4. Kathy O'Reilly Says:

    To clarify, the closing of these two products by Lycos Europe does not impact Lycos users in the U.S. Lycos, Inc. and Lycos Europe are two completely separate entities and business units. Lycos, Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Daum Communications, Corp., while Lycos Europe is owned by Telefonica. For further clarification on this issue, go to:
    http://www.buzz.lycos.com/index.blog?entry_id=1874608.

    As you mention above, TechCrunch has corrected the original post. However, the incorrect logo is still present. We’ve also requested the Lycos, Inc. logo be replaced by Lycos Europe’s logo.

    — Kathy O’Reilly, Director of PR, Lycos, Inc.

  5. Gary Says:

    We have it right on http://TheSOABlog.com