Juan Diego Calle Spearheads Sale Of Million Internet Addresses As Colombian Government Opens Extension Co To The World

If the domain name you were hoping to land for your company wasn’t available, don’t despair. You might not be stuck with a long web address.

A year ago the Colombian government opened up its domain extension, .co, to the world in a process overseen by .CO Internet, which maintains offices on Brickell Avenue.

The firm beat out companies like Verisign, which oversees tens of millions of .com web addresses, for the position and has seen .co domain names grow from a paltry 28,000 to about a million in less than a year.

In the process, the company saw revenues top $20 million, said CEO Juan Diego Calle.

He dropped out of the University of Miami in the late 1990s to start an Internet company that became one of thousands to bear the brunt of a bursting bubble. The technology was left running, started generating traffic and was sold to Internet giant Yahoo for an undisclosed amount.

Mr. Calle discussed what he’s doing to convince companies to build quality websites on the .co platform and what it takes to run a business in the rapidly changing technology world with Miami Today’s Zachary Fagenson. To read the entire issue of Miami Today online, subscribe to e -Miami Today, an exact digital replica of the printed edition. To read this profile article in its entirety, subscribe to e-MiamiToday. With the e-MiamiToday you will be able to read the entire contents of Miami Today online exactly as it appears in print. Or order this issue, to receive a regular printed copy of this week’s Miami Today. You may also subscribe to the printed edition of Miami Today to receive the newspaper every week by mail. If you are reading this in Miami Today’s “Online Archive” as an archived web page and would like to see the entire article that was published, call Miami Today, 305-358-2663 and ask for the Circulation Department.   Top Front Page About Miami Today Put Your Message in Miami Today Contact Miami Today © Copyright 2011 Miami Today designed and produced by Green Dot Advertising and Marketingvar gaJsHost = ((“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);document.write(unescape(“%3Cscript src='” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(“UA-4990655-1”);pageTracker._initData();pageTracker._trackPageview();