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List of Archives of Defunct Websites

List started by: TechLists
List contributors: OldWeb_DeepWeb_HiddenWeb, TechLists
Date started: 2013-09-08
Last updated: 2014-11-02
Keywords:
web archiving, history of the internet, archives

Description:

This is a list of links to archives of now defunct major websites. Some of the archives are incomplete due to the short notice given for the closures. Some of the archives will be replicas of the old websites (but hosted on a different domain), while others will have their content bundled up and compressed.

The World Wide Web (WWW) was introduced to the public in 1991, and it revolutionised many facets of life. Despite its relatively recent introduction, the WWW has evolved a lot, with new styles and capabilities, and with websites rising to global fame, only to die after becoming redundant, being out-competed (or bought-out by a competitor), or being radically changed (with huge amounts of content removed).

Due to its huge impact, the WWW (especially in its early years) will almost certainly be treated in the future as being of great importance in human history. Unfortunately, huge amounts of historically significant (and in many cases very useful) content has been deleted, after website closures and redesigns. A good example of this is GeoCities.

GeoCities was a large website that allowed its users to host websites (off the GeoCities domain), which were categorised by theme-based 'neighbourhoods' (e.g. the CapitolHill neighbourhood was for websites related to politics and government). GeoCities was founded in 1994, bought by Yahoo in 1999, and ended in 2009. There were at least 38 million user-built pages on GeoCities before it was taken down.

GeoCities was home to some of the oldest webpages. Although many of the early webpages were amateurish, they were created by people who were not only new to web development, but new to a new technology which was yet to be widely adopted. Those old webpages could give future historians, sociologists, psychologists and researchers from other disciplines insights into how the WWW was used back when it was small, how the WWW evolved, and the culture, opinions and attitudes of the time.

In 2009, Yahoo's announcement that GeoCities would be closed and the content would be deleted, enraged many people who saw the value of preserving those digital historical artefacts (some would compare the mass deletions to the burning of the Library of Alexandria). Some did their best to archive as much of GeoCities as they could within the small amount of time. Much of GeoCities was archived, but not all of it. The death of GeoCities (and its announcement) lead to the formation of nonprofit groups such as the Archive Team, that are dedicated to preserving historically significant (and/or potentially desirable) web content from websites which would soon be taken down (or seem likely to be taken down).

List Entries:
1. OoCities An archive of GeoCities taken just before it was taken down. The archived webpages can be viewed online.
2. Reocities Reocities (RIP GeoCities) is another archive of GeoCities taken just before it was shut down. The archived webpages can be viewed online.
3. Geocities.ws An archive of GeoCities, which also allows its users to create further content. The archived webpages can be viewed online.
4. FortuneCity.ws An archive of FortuneCity (a website similar to GeoCities, that lasted from 1997 to 2012). The archived webpages can be viewed online.
5. Webshots archive A bundled archive of Webshots, a photo sharing website (similar to Flickr) which lasted (as a photo sharing site) from 1999 to 2012. The archiving was done by Archive Team, and the data is stored at Archive.org.
6. Posterous archive A bundled archive of Posterous, a blogging platform similar to Blogspot and Wordpress, which lasted from 2008 to 2013. The archiving was done by Archive Team, and the data is stored at Archive.org.
7. Yahoo! Korea Blogs archive A bundled archive of 15 years worth of Yahoo! Korea Blogs. The archiving was done by Archive Team, and the data is stored at Archive.org.
8. DailyBooth archive A bundled archive of the defunct website DailyBooth. DailyBooth was a photoblogging website where its users posted daily photos of themselves with captions. It lasted from 2009 to the end of 2012. The archiving was done by Archive Team, and the data is stored at Archive.org.
9. MobileMe archive A huge bundled archive of .me and MobileMe user accounts.
10. Yahoo! Video archives Bundled archives of the user generated videos of Yahoo! Video. Yahoo! Video was a video sharing site that lasted from 2006 to 2011. It was then renamed Yahoo! Screen and no longer had the user generated content.
11. Orkut An online archive of communities of the now defunct social network Orkut. Orkut started in 24 January 2004, and ended in 30 September 2014. Orkut was available in a variety of languages, but over half of its users were from Brazil.

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