I've always thought geocities could have been facebook. People just wanted a page to post pictures and share with their friends. Geocities could have automated something like that....
MySpace shows that it wasn't just about having a page to share images and stuff IMO.
Geocities & MySpace had little consistency across pages. But Facebook won by starting off with trend-setters (college kids) and using network effect as it's foundation.
In the UK FriendsReunited filled the "share pictures and info" hope too and briefly was pretty massive.
