Jon Sykes is an internet service developer and philanthropist. He has a string of small pet projects - some of which have grown to become very successful. All of his projects have set to provide value to a very small niche of people. The vast majority are free, advertless services, there for the better good.
He has since 2007 run a site called hexday which has gain a small yet dedicated group of contributors, who pick a single hex color every day.
At the end of 2008, he scored great success with the site usernamecheck.com which checked user names (or handles) across some 60+ web 2.0 social networks. The site gain critical acclaim from internet brand managers, SEO experts, internet stalkers and a number of online child protection agencies and charities.
It exposed the somewhat frustrating situation that was arising from the importance of a username registered with social networks, and the land rush with squatters and brand dilution similar to the early domain name purchases and sales.
Upon reaching the 500,000 unique username target, he closed the site down, citing “it was just a pet project”. Since then the domain name has changed hands, and a number of clone sites have been developed to fill the void - many of them created using the code that he published on the site on a page entitled “Behind the curtain”.
He continues to work on new ideas, whilst maintaining his day job at web development agency mediahive.
