Chicago.com – New Version Offers Personalized Emails and Subdomains

-Originally posted on TINC Magazine-

Chicago.com Emails

The initial news broke when the New York Times wrote about Chicago.com offering email addresses that ended with @chicago.com. This would allow you to buy [email protected] , [email protected], [email protected], etc.

It’s a “pure” email/digital identity service, so you buy [email protected], it ties into your email provider of choice, like Yahoo!, Gmail, AOL, Outlook, or Hotmail.

Individuals, companies and organization can request an invite by writing to [email protected].  And there are limits; you can’t, for example, get [email protected] (or trademarked names like Sox/Blackhawks/Bulls/Bears) until IP issues are discussed and resolved.

Chicago.com Subdomains

But the bigger story may be the subdomain digital real estate that Chicago.com is launching. This will create of a new and different Chicago.com site, filled with subdomain content created by individuals in Chicago. (An example of a subdomain would be sports.chicago.com.)

If the content of the subdomained sites is done well, the sites will boost each other's SEO, creating a built-in audience for subdomain owners, and an ecosystem that has the capacity to grow and become a grassroots, almost crowdsourced, city/community website. Chicago.com  will be launching a brand new hotels section in concert with Priceline at hotels.chicago.com, are planning a wedding section at weddings.chicago.com. This summer, they created segway.chicago.com in partnership with Bike & Roll.

Another curated subdomain, idea.Chicago.com, will become a launching platform that allows selected individuals to showcase an idea they want to build. The Chicago.com team will provide the technical infrastructure and consulting to help them launch what they want to launch.

CEO Josh Metnick

Metnick and his team have spent nearly a year in development of the system.  It's the first website for which he’s been overseeing development since he launched Guitar.com in 1999, a site that climbed to over a million uniques/month in about six months, and was later sold.  He was not heavily involved in any of the previous three Chicago.com versions, but that has changed with the new site.