site free web hosting service registration yes owner lycos created by bo peabody brett hershey and dick sabot alexa rank 2 566 april 2015 update 1 tripod.com tra po d is a web hosting service owned by lycos . originally aiming its services to college students and young adults it was one of several sites trying to build online communities during the 1990s . as such tripod formed part of the first wave of user generated content . contents 1 services 2 history 2.1 website launch 2.2 investment and buyout 3 domain name 4 shutdown rumor 5 see also 6 references 7 external links services edit tripod offers free and paid web hosting services including 20 megabytes of storage space and the ability to run common gateway interface cgi scripts in perl . in addition to basic hosting tripod also offers a blogging tool a photo album manager and the trellix site builder for wysiwyg page editing . tripod s for pay services include additional disk space a shopping cart domain names web and pop imap email . history edit tripod originated in 1992 with two williams college classmates bo peabody and brett hershey along with dick sabot an economics professor at the school . the company was headquartered in williamstown massachusetts with peabody as ceo . although it would eventually focus on the internet tripod also published a magazine tools for life that was distributed with textbooks and offered a discount card for students . 2 website launch edit the domain name tripod.com was created on september 29 1994 3 and the site officially launched in 1995 after operating in sneak preview mode for a period . billed as a hip web site and pay service for and by college students it offered how to advice on practical issues young people might deal with when first living away from home . it planned to charge a minimal fee and make money primarily on commissions from partners who would sell products on the site . 4 other services available included r sum writing features and a simple homepage builder . 2 although the feature was an afterthought originally tripod soon became known as a place where people could create free web pages competing with the likes of geocities and angelfire . 5 criticizing aol the existing leader in this space for its walled garden approach peabody described the company s aims our idea is to build a community through user created and user based content . 6 a washington post reviewer recommended tripod over geocities for giving users an easier url to remember and because geocities sites had a tendency to crash computers . 7 investment and buyout edit after receiving an initial investment of us 4 million in venture capital led by new enterprises associates in may 1997 tripod took an additional round of investment totaling us 10 million . by this time the company had grown to 40 employees and was hoping to reach profitability by the 1st quarter of 1998 . the second group of investors included interpublic which paid us 2.5 million for a stake in tripod estimated at 10 percent thus implying a valuation of us 25 million for the company overall . 2 as it turned out tripod would be sold in february 1998 to lycos for a reported us 58 million in stock . 8 lycos also ended up owning tripod s former competitor angelfire picked up as part of the acquisition of whowhere . the two properties were run concurrently with tripod continuing to focus on its college age audience while angelfire tended to attract high school users . in early 2001 tripod reached 6 million registered users up from nearly 1 million at the time it was acquired and was expanding at an estimated 250 000 new sites per month . however generating profits remained difficult with an analyst opining that they needed better user profiling so the sites could generate the results expected by advertisers . they also had the challenge of not alienating users while trying to make money . 9 by the end of the year tripod and angelfire also introduced account options allowing users to pay in order to keep their sites ad free . geocities itself now acquired by yahoo would follow suit not long afterward . 10 domain name edit web sites generally are a subdomain of tripod.com . however users can pay a monthly charge and own a domain name . paying in this manner also allows for other benefits such as more disk space for the site which allows the site owner to put more information onto it and personalized email accounts i.e. yourname yoursite.com . shutdown rumor edit on january 18 2009 the blog techcrunch erroneously reported that lycos would be shutting down the tripod service on february 15 2009 . in actuality the february shutdown was correct but applied only to lycos europe and so only users of lycos europe services were affected . by the afternoon following the initial techcrunch article lycos posted an entry on their lycos buzz blog explaining this and assuring readers that lycos us and the tripod service were not shutting down . techcrunch subsequently corrected the error in their original article . 11 see also edit comparison of free web hosting services references edit alexa ranking . alexa internet . retrieved 18 april 2015 . a b c elliott stuart . interpublic invests in an internet provider aimed at the transition generation of young adults . new york times may 28 1997 p. d5 . tripod.com site info alexa shannon victoria . board bulletin . washington post may 31 1995 p. r22 . akst daniel . so you re ready for a web page . los angeles times june 24 1996 p. 3 . sreenivasan sreenath . new neighborhood no money down . new york times march 17 1997 p. d5 . hertzman monica neal . it didn t take a miracle to share their trip . just the web . washington post july 11 1999 p. e1 . technology brief . lycos inc. acquisition of tripod inc. expected to be announced . wall street journal february 3 1998 p. 1 . musgrove mike . a home page of one s own free easy site hosting services tap into the urge to post . washington post january 28 2001 p. h1 . walker leslie . many free home page sites putting the squeeze on users . washington post march 10 2002 p. h7 . fox geoff . lycos mail tripod death not so fast . appscout . 18 jan. 2009 . web . 22 aug. 2009 . external links edit official website v t e lycos lycos network angelfire gamesville hotbot htmlgear insiderinfo tripod weather zombie webon whowhere former properties matchmaker.com quote.com webmonkey wired news related articles ybrant digital carnegie mellon university v t e webby awards nominee 1998 award in the category community awards ceremonies 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 list of winners retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title tripod.com & oldid 739237860 categories companies based in massachusettsfree web hosting servicesinternet properties established in 1995web hostingweb portalshidden categories articles containing potentially dated statements from april 2015all articles containing 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