20 Websites You'll Never Visit Again

The Internet is a cruel place. This time we aren't talking about the vitriolic comments and shame-hungry 24-hour media cycle, though those things anger us on the daily. No, we're talking about the dog-eat-digital-dog world of staying relevant online. It seems like every day a website that once had legions of loyal users is bought out, absorbed, or simply shuttered with little more than a "website not found" in place of its once mighty homescreen. Social media behemoths, hosting hotbeds, and file-sharing giants have all met their ends as newer, more user friendly solutions take their place. Today, we take a moment to remember the sites that have made their way to the Internet graveyard, lost in the relentless forward march of the World Wide Web. Pour one out for your dead homepages: here are 20 Websites You'll Never Visit Again.

No discussion of failed websites is complete without a look at those sticky moments when tech giants overextend themselves. Itunes Ping, Google +, and Google Answers are all great examples of how the smartest guys in the room can still often be dead wrong. Let's tackle Google Answers, as it rates of one of the strangest of these side projects so far. Google Answers was a search engine that involved paying real people to get the info you needed. You placed a "bounty" (their word, not ours) to incentivize contractors to find the knowledge you needed. Why did this process fail? Besides being pretty weird, the supposed geniuses at Google forbade pornographic and homework help questions, which experts estimate decimated roughly 99.9% of their potential business.

Myspace and Google+ aren't the only failed social networks that have tried to come at King Zuckerberg and missed. Yes, there was a social network based on that game people play with Kevin Bacon, and believe it or not, it was a failure. The website connected you to your friends and family, as is true of pretty much every social networking site, but also allowed you to reach beyond your intimate social network, to friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends. Given the heinous amount of spamming that happens among your personal contacts on Facebook and Twitter, we have trouble imagining that this method could have done anything but fail on today's hyper-connected web. Credit should be given where credit's due, however, as Sixdegrees.com influenced later, far more succesful sites like LinkedIn and Facebook.

The Internet service provider game was once fully dominated by Compuserve and Prodigy. Much like AOL, MSN, and other ISPs and search engines do today, Prodigy also offered a home page with links to a news ticker, and information from partners like Consumer Reports, ESPN, and other popular sites. So, back in the 90s, Prodigy provided both Internet services and web content for many customers. Prodigy was a pionnering company in several ways. They had one of the first web companies with a staffed newsroom, though they were limited by the speed of dial-up. Prodigy was also one of the first major companies to provide e-mail, message boards, and other services on a massive scale. Despite their trailblazing, a series of missteps in pricing and interface resulted in quickly squandered potential. By the 2001, Prodigy had changed hands several times and was well on its way to Internet irrelevance. One quirk you might remember from this venerable ISP is that while AOL sent you free discs in the mail, the Prodigy team opted to send customers free modems.

It isn't totally fair only picking on Borders, one of many media sellers to fall victim to the volitile retail marketplace. We could have chosen Tower Records, Blockbuster Video, or Circuit City, and we're sure that there are many more yet to fall before mighty Amazon. For a number of reasons, many brick and mortar stores simply couldn't set up effective e-commerce to compete with Amazon.com and the legions of other websites that have facilitated the online retail revolution. Though Borders had many loyal customers in their stores right up until they closed their doors, they had one little problem: their customers didn't buy anything. People loved buying a latté and looking for a glossy new book... and then buying it cheaper on Amazon. We'll miss you Borders: not as much as we miss the independent book stores you put out of business in your heyday, but, we'll miss you a little bit.

Before Facebook, before Myspace, there was Friendster. For two glorious years between 2002 and 2004, Friendster was the number one social networking site in America, and it was all downhill from there. At the height of the site's popularity, Friendster's board turned down a $30 million buyout attempt from Google, as they estimately their value at nearly double that. Two years later, the sites valuation would be placed at one-twentieth that estimate. The story didn't end there for Friendster, however. While the website almost completely losts its American presence, Friendster gained a substantial foothold in Asia. In 2008, the site had 115 million Asian users. In 2009, Friendster was bought by MOL Global for $26 million and has since been turned into a gaming website.

Though we're pretty sure that cute viral cartoons and shortform, absurd comedy videos would have become a linchpin of the Internet without the influence of Homestar Runner, the site undeniably shaped the creative sensibilities of many web content creators who would follow in their footsteps. Homestarrunner.com was one of the premeire destinations for animated comedy on the web in the first years after Y2K, bringing the Chapman Brothers creative and financial success even though they staunchly avoided selling ad space. Highlights for the Homestar team included collaboration with Adult Swim and a recording session with They Might Be Giants. By 2010, the posts from HSR had dried up. Co-founder Matt Chapman has gone on to work for Yo Gabba Gabba and Aquabats! The Show leaving only a few cryptic Twitter messages and a random Comic-Con appearance for fans hoping for a Strongbad come back.

Remember BlackPlanet.com? The popular social site amongst African Americans that rose to popularity in the late nineties and early aughts. As an established online destination for youth looking to connect—it's slogan was "The world is yours"—BP was basically MySpace before MySpace. And, yes, it's still around today, though the site looks like it's stuck in 2002 (it could use a major redesign). Despite numerous attempts to attract more users—with text alerts, mobile applications, etc—BP ceded power to MySpace and eventually to Facebook. The game just ain't the same anymore.

Unlike the majority of the sites on this list, Sparknotes is still alive and thriving. They've even added some charming, teen-friendly articles to their home page. If you've made it through the rigors of high school, and aren't a pretty terrible college student, then you likely no longer have a need for the GPA saving literary website. Though we all leave Sparknotes behind at one point or another and begin (gasp) reading for pleasure, or, you know, not reading anything besides lists on the Internet, we all remember a moment when Sparknotes saved our skin. Even those of you out there who were too proud to resort to Sparknotes have to admit that if you could do it all over again, you would have let the website provide a concise summary of The Awakening or Daisy Miller rather than slogging through actually reading those novels.

There was a time when Harry Knowles, the controversial nerd-king behind Ain't It Cool News was the Perez Hilton of the Comicon set. These days Knowles is struggling just to keep AICN online. Hal Esyn and Boris Kit hit the heart of AICN's struggles in their Hollywood Reporter profile of Knowles earlier this year. They asked, " Is the pioneer of online nerddom still relevant in an age where there are a hundred different sites covering geek entertainment, where sneak peeks now are doled out by studio marketing divisions, where filmmakers have figured out how to work the web to their advantage rather than hide from it, where directors like J.J. Abrams wield secrecy like Tolkien's Ring of Power?" The answer seems to be "no." Back in the 90s Knowles was notorious for being able to infiltrate the biggest blockbusters and cut through studio red tape to get the dirt on anticipated films. As the Internet has progressed, studios are becoming far more web savvy, and what was once a scoop is now leaked immediately from a hungry insider or even released willingly by a studio's PR department. This has left the well-connected Knowles struggling to stay afloat. Though the page sill commandes a quarter million unique visitors a month, Hollywood Reporter estimates that audiences were once "an order of magnitude larger." While some of you may still stop by AICN, the majority of the audience has left Knowles behind for good.

Unlike many websites on this list, Hot or Not still exists in a form not too far from what its founders envisioned. Hot or Not also lacked the complex and noble aspirations of many web start-ups. The idea behind Hot or Not was incredibly simple and that is what made the site so damn addicting. You could spend hours deciding whether person after person was suitably attractive. Not only was this a nice addition to the teenager's steady diet of Maxim and sneaking peeks at you dad's porno, but it gave you a sense of control in the crazy world of adolescence. With your fluctuating weight and acne level, it was impossible to control your own hotness, but damn it, you were the grand arbiter of whether or not dozens of strangers were "hot or not." Whether or not you agree with the superficial objectification of Hot or Not, its initial appeal can't be overstated. Two days after the site's launch in 2000, the site had been visited 2 million times. The overnight success of the site led the future founders of Facebook and Youtube to attempt copycat sites before arriving at their respective cashcows.

We are gathered here today to mourn all of the websites we used to steal shit from. Rest in peace, Kazaa, Limewire, and of course, the granddaddy of them all, Napster. From the ships of our Piratebay, we send a 21-gun salute with Nelly and Taking Back Sunday in the background to celebrate the many songs we stole with your help. Like every good outlaw, when you went straight, we all knew it was the beginning of the end. Though Lars Ulrich will never love you, we always will.

Did you know that Angelfire, the website that hosted your dumb fan site in middle school, was also orginally a medical transcription service? Angelfire quickly dropped the transcription portion of their business to facilitate the creation of some of the greatest fan sites and fan fiction we've ever seen. Back in the day, Angelfire was the premiere destination for fans of everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to George the Animal Steele. If you were one of the legions of teens who professed love for their favorite pop culture icons via the animated GIF laden sites of Angelfire, hold your head high, you're in good company. As it turns out, a young Mark Zuckerberg might have dabbled in a little Angelfire himself.

Geocities has followed the same career trajectory as a once popular metal band. They have descended from the heights of popularity (the site was once the world's third most visited) to being only available in Japan. Though Geocities was once a web hosting superpower, their layout was downright quaint by today's standards. When Geocities first launched, the websites wre grouped by "cities" that corresponded to the topic of your site. For example, if you are talking film, then you choose "Hollywood" and if you just love animals, you belong in "Petsburgh." Yahoo! abandoned this method once they acquired the Geocities. Yahoo didn't do much else that made sense after purchasing Geocities for $3.5 billion in stock. With poorly received changes to terms of service and data throttling, Yahoo ensured the slow decline of Geocities, which ended with the shuttering of the American branch of the site in 2009.

Let no one say that Alta Vista didn't put up a good fight. Though you haven't used the service in over a decade, Alta Vista somehow only closed its doors a month and a half ago; the site formally shut down on July 11th. Though Alta Vista was dragged into the Internet kicking and screaming, the writing had been on the wall for close to a decade. After the 1998 acquisition of Alta Vista by Compaq, and a subsequent attempt to change the search engine into a portal similar to Yahoo!, Alta Vista changed hands four times before finally calling it quits. Though Alta Vista made a valiant effort, competing with Google (and Bing, we guess) is an incredibly difficult proposition.

Oh Jeeves, where have you gone? Ask Jeeves, best remembered as one of the dozens of search engines that couldn't compete with Google because they weren't nearly as good, phased out their butler mascot and became simply Ask.com in 2006. By 2010, the site wasn't even a search engine anymore. Ask.com still exists today, but rather than focusing on search, they specifically attempt to provide answers to user questions with their "Q & A Service." Pivoting away from search has proven a sage move, as the site is currently estimated to reach 100 million global users per month. There's a lesson for you, kids: if you can't beat 'em, do something else.

AOL Instant Messanger was such an important part of so many of our childhoods that we feel pangs of guilt when we think about how we've abandoned it. For many currently in their late teens and twenties, AIM was the gateway drug that led to a life of inane chatting and shameless flirting on the Internet. While we might like to forget many of the things we chatted to our friends on AIM, not to mention the attempted wisdom of our Away Messages, we'll never forget our screennames. Whether you were RazrScootrDude89 or PowrPuffGrlFan00, your first AIM screenname is forever written on your heart, a childhood embarassment that sticks with you like a bad yearbook photos or your first sexual encounter.