Service Status
Just a quick update about our new facebook page. We finally switched from having a facebook group to having a *facebook page*. This lets us keep everyone updated with news, coupons, offers, promotions, video tutorials and much more! Everyone that has facebook (and even those that don’t), just click below and become a Fan of T35 Hosting!
Geocities shutting down – another one bites the dust
Some of you might have already heard the news, but to me it’s still unbelievable. Frequent visitors of this blog might remember seeing a rewiew I did a few months ago about all the old free hosts and how most of them no longer exists. Geocities was actually one of the few that was still around – mostly because it was backed by Yahoo! and could absorb the millions of dollars of expenses they were accruing.
Well, even the might Yahoo! no longer wants anything to do with free web hosting. For those that were online in the 1990′s, you might recall that Yahoo! spent over $2.87 billion to buy geocities. That’s right folks, say that number outloud to yourselves. $2.87 BILLION dollars. Not to mention that $2.87B in 1999 dollars would equal well over $3 BILLION today. Ironically enough, the value of the entire Yahoo! corporation was down to as low as $12B earlier this year.
Geocities was one of the original web hosts, and was actually one of the few that was started before T35. I actually enjoyed competing with them over the years (as opposed to competing with Google and all the dirty tricks they use). Here’s the official and final word from the Geocities folks themselves:
Sorry, new GeoCities accounts are no longer available. After careful consideration, we have decided to close GeoCities later this year. We’ll share more details this summer.
Alex Melen Interview at Retireat21.com
I just finished an interview with Michael Dunlop from Retireat21.com, go check it out: http://www.retireat21.com/interview/interview-with-alex-melen-founder-of-t35-free-web-hosting
Some of the questions I cover in the interview include:
– Tell us about your main project, T35 Hosting ? Why did you launch T35 Hosting ? Where are you at now with T35 Hosting ?
– I understand that you have over 600,000 free hosting customers and a few thousand paid hosting customers, what advice would you give a young entrepreneur trying to build a membership of any kind?
– Your website has an incredible today’s alexa ranking of 7000! How have you been able to achieve such a high rate of traffic? What advice would you give a young entrepreneur trying to market their website?
– Why should people use T35 over any other FREE host? What do you offer that makes your service better than your competition?
– Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?
– What advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur setting up their first business?
Tripod Free Hosting Closes Down
An email I received from tripod this morning:
Dear User,
As announced on the 26th of November 2008 the portal and webhosting activities of the Lycos Europe GmbH will be discontinued. Unfortunately, the free hosting service Tripod is effected. For this reason we are hereby terminating your Tripod Account as of 15th February 2009. Until the 15th February you can use your Tripod account and your Homepage as usual. After this date we will close your account and delete all your content which was stored on Tripod in accordance with legal requirements. After this date it will be ímpossible to view your Homepage in the internet or to do a Backup using FTP from your page because the content will be unrecoverably deleted. That is why we advise you to to backup all necessary data in the near future from your Tripod Account on your hard drive and if wanted to upload it to another homepage provider. Please keep in mind that we do not offer any support for the free homepages neither by phone nor by email for upcoming questions. Because of this reason we created a short description how to backup your data. We regret having to take this step and we want to thank you for your confidence in the past. Currently, we are still working on finding a solution to provide you the service through another provider. If we should succeed in doing so, we will inform you within the next 4 weeks. But as this is currently doubtful, we would like to ask you to assume the end of the service. Despite the sad news we wish you and your family a successful 2009.
Best wishes,
Your Lycos Tripod Team
For those who read my “What happened to free web hosting?” post from last year, Tripod was one of the few that was actually still around and operating. I guess I spoke too soon though. Although I haven’t used my tripod account in half a decade, it’s still sad to see another iconic 90′s free web host close it’s doors.
*UPDATE* I am still trying confirm if this applies to all of tripod, or only the European operations (tripod.co.uk). If anyone knows, please feel free to chime in.