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From...
GeoCities members frustrated by mandatory watermark
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| The watermark appears on GeoCities pages and links back to their site | |
June 25, 1998
Web posted at: 11:00 AM EDT
by Dianne See
(IDG) -- Members of GeoCities, the Internet's most popular Web community, are frustrated. They are angry over a mandatory "watermark," a transparent GeoCities logo that now appears on their home pages and links back to the GeoCities site.
Members who are opposed to the watermark believe that the logo, which is fixed on the right hand corner of the page and jumps down as the user scrolls down, interferes with site design. "It's ugly," says Michael Stevens, a GeoCities member who has created a home page protesting the watermark.
Rick Brown, whose popular Monty Python page has received some 75,000 hits since its creation, the watermark brings up issues of control. "If GeoCities wants to advertise, they should give us a way to control it. É We're willing to give them their advertising, they should be willing to give us our site design."
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The protest over the GeoCities watermark points to a growing concern among online community members that services are not respecting their rights as members. Just last week, America Online was forced to revise its most recent Terms of Service agreement when members of the Free Form Gaming Forum, a community of writers and role-players, balked at the new terms. Even when AOL did revise the terms, the FFGF didn't believe America Online had done enough. Members maintained that the service was asking for too much control of their content.
The protest also demonstrates that online community members are fully aware of the role they play in the business of Web communities. "This is not a free service," said Brown. "We are paying for our pages. GeoCities creates no content of their own. What they're selling is the content we create. We are paying for our server space and our bandwidth with the content we create for them."
GeoCities chairman David Bohnett says that the watermark is an easy way for members to link back to the GeoCities site, a mandatory requirement that has always existed. He also said that the company has received a surprisingly high amount of positive feedback. In an e-mail forwarded by Bohnett, one homesteader wrote, "I just loved [the watermark]! And I want to know if I could use [it] in my pages. If I could, I'll upload the new pages NOW." And another wrote, "I think its great thing. It looks extremly good and is veeeery cool. Dont throw that idea away."
"We are very aware of the issues, concerns and wants of our members," said Bohnett. "We have always prided ourselves on listening to our members."
Other homesteaders tell a different story. Stevens says his and other members' attempts to elicit a response from GeoCities have been met with silence. "They say they want your input and when you give it there's no response." In a disappointed voice that echoes the disillusionment felt by the Free Form Gaming Forum over their treatment by America Online, Stevens added, "This is supposed to be a community, and a community is supposed to care about their members."
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