HBS Grad Hoarding Web Domains

A Harvard Business School grad is making big bucks by selling online domain names after the web address ".co" was handed over to him by the Colombian government.

According to the Huffington Post, Juan Diego Calle, a native Colombian and "serial entrepreneur" who graduated in 2007, won the rights to manage .co after the Colombian government changed a law which prompted Internet companies to begin lobbying the government for control of the address.

The Colombian government had owned .co for years but barred almost anyone from registering websites. The .co ending is considered hot online real estate because it could stand for "corporation," "company," or "commercial."

Thirty-two-year-old Calle bid against titans in the industry and managed to win the job, which he called a "surreal experience." Calle and his team officially launched .co on July 20, 2010, and within one minute, 8,000 domains had been registered. As of Sept. 5, 476,980 web addresses have been registered.

Calle, now an Internet real estate magnate, has tried to set the tone for .co with a flashy website that reads "Welcome to the .CO Era" and by giving away .co web addresses free to the top 100 world brands.

Get cozy with .co and check out Twitter or Politico.

Photo by Kane Hsieh/The Harvard Crimson.