Push for .TV domains
It appears this post has been sitting in my drafts folder, ready to post for some weeks now, so why not post it at this point.
After the announcement that Demand Media’s eNom division is going to manage the .TV retail registrations for VeriSign in the future, they have now released details on their plans.
For this purpose they have launched ChannelMe.TV today, which markets the .TV domain (which actually is the country code for Tuvalu) as a domain to “create your own TV channel”. The site does not yet offer any additional services, such as video hosting, with the domain registration, but those tools are “coming soon” according to the site (March 2007 according to the Washington Post article).
Premium domains (the registry charges a premium for what they consider valuable domains) cannot be registered through the site, they refer you to the eNom.tv instead. The eNom.TV website does not register those names either at the moment, but allows you to express interest by filling out a form and they will notify you when the name is for sale in Q1/2007.
The announcement reminds me of Tom Gardner’s (of the Motley Fool) speech at the Florida TRAFFIC conference, where he said that if he would be investing in domains, he would be buying .TV domains, due to the increased popularity of online videos. According to some .TV domain registrants, the extension already gets type-in traffic today.
[via the Washington Post]
I thought of this post today when I saw the announcement of the ipod phone. I wonder what will be more valuable – .tv or .mobi – once this new device hits the streets in June. Although each TLD has some established development, I can see either one becoming viable for the growth of the mobile market.
[...] The .tv URL is being used by the permission of the small island nation of Tuvalu and a percentage of the profits go to the tiny nation – and rightfully so. My beef is why can’t I register with my preferred URL vendor and what kind of “special rights” do the .tv people reserve on the URL’s they are selling. According to Domain Editorial the .tv corporation (a sub group of Verisign) is now in control of all .tv domains and they are not selling them like other domains. I can go buy a .com pretty easily, redirect it, move it, etc. – whereas with .tv I have to use channelme.tv and some of the .tv domains are not available because they are a “premium” domain and will be released for sale at a later date. So Demand Media also has eNom.com which will let you register .tv URL’s if you sign in for a reseller account – at least it appears that way. [...]
[...] As reported earlier the .tv TLD will be promoted with the inclusion of sitebuilding and MySpace like-networking tools, which is a unique approach for TLD promotion. The portal into all of the sites, originally called “ChannelMe.tv” has now been relaunched as “me.tv“. Sample sites built with the new tools are: Carson Daly.tv and ambler.tv (eNom employees were given a .TV domain each, more information on it here). [...]