Josh Metnick
Josh Metnick is best known as the owner of Chicago.com and is active in the geo domain space. He and former Associated Cities Executive Director Patrick Carleton co-founded GEO.FUTR LLC and aim to put on the GEO.FUTR conference in 2003,[1] at which they say, "attendees will learn strategies, techniques and best practices for maximizing the value of GeoTLDs and Geographic domain names. Conference participants will benefit from the select networking opportunities made available only to conference participants."[2][3]
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| Country: | USA |
| Email: | josh [at] chicago.com |
| Twitter: |  @joshmetnick
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Metnick is also a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Awesome Foundation's Chicago chapter, a non-profit organization that gives out monthly microgrants to ideas that it deems "awesome."[4]
Career History
Metnick began coding computer games at the age of 9 and started an ISP called American Information Systems with three friends while in his Senior year at the University of Illinois. The company, into which Metnick invested $5,000 and three others invested a total of $50,000, was later sold in 2006 for $20 million.[5][6]
Metnick has been involved with internet companies since 1994, since he registered his first domain names and built his first commercial websites.[7]
In 2001, Metnick purchased chicago.com for $500,000, beating out The Tribune Company. He has since been selling personalized chicago.com email addresses to individuals and businesses willing to pay substantial amounts of money.[5] In its first year of selling subdomains and vanity Chicago.com email addresses, Metnick's company generated $125,000 in revenue with nearly no marketing.[8]
Despite not applying for .chicago during the first round of ICANN's New gTLD Program, Metnick and his company Chicago.com, Inc. did file a trademark application in May 2012 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office for the DotChicago mark.[9] He is currently developing an application for .chicago for the second round of ICANN's New gTLD Program[4]
Amongst others, he is also the owner of telaviv.com, illinois.com, neworleans.com, brookline.com, and cambridge.com, under which email addresses and subdomains are sold, similar to the chicago.com model.[8]
Metnick was also been involved in planning 2008's Geodomain Expo in Chicago.
In 2000, Metnick co-founded January Studio LLC and licensed film rights for works of Pär Lagerkvist, a 1951 Nobel Literaturare Laureate, and in 2003, invested in Vibes Media, now one of the largest mobile marketing companies in the world. He has also been a board member for a software company focused on F2F meetings called Networking Research Group, Inc., Inuvo, Inc., RootOrange LLC, and Equity Group Investment LLC's investment of ArmyProperty.com, a military inventory management system.[7]
References
- ↑ Patrick Carleton and Josh Metnick plan conference for geo TLD applicants. Domain Name Wire. Published 2012 September 17. Retrieved 2012 November 11.
- ↑ Two Geodomain Veterans Return to the Spotlight With Plans for a New Conference. Published 2012 September 18. Retrieved 2012 November 11.
- ↑ 2013 GeoFutr.com Geo gTLD & Geodomain Conference Announced. Elliot's Blog. Published 2012 September 17. Retrieved 2012 November 11.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 ICANN 45 Interview. ICANNWiki. Retrieved 2012 October 25.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 My Kind of Town, and Now Maybe Your Kind of Domain Name. The New York Times. Published 2011 December 2. Retrieved 2012 November 11.
- ↑ The Money Makers. Chicago Mag. Published 2006 April. Retrieved 2012 November 11.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 About. AtIdentity. Retrieved 2012 November 11.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 The Future Of Geo Domains: Chicago.com Makes $125K In 1st Year Of Selling SubDomains & Email Addresses. The Domains. Published 2012 October 20. Retrieved 2012 November 11.
- ↑ Chicago.com applies for dotchicago trademark. EraNet. Retrieved 2012 November 11.