.tv relaunched
With yesterday’s (re-)launch of the sale of premium .tv names by eNom (which appears to have launched a couple of hours late), many of the premium .TV names have become available again. Of course they remained at a premium price, just like before.
The sale of the names appears to have been integrated into eNom’s aftermarket site where all of the available premium names are listed. The prices range from $52 for “gaps.tv” and to $500,000 for “business.tv”. The list of premium names currently contains over 52,000 names.
Over the years the registry and different licensees of the ccTLD for the island of Tuvalu have tried different models to market their premium names, including increasing renewal fees for some of the names deemed special by the registry. In the current model the site states that the annual renewal fees will be as high as the initial purchase price, but also says that the renewal fees are “subject to change”. So the question remains: Will successful sites be charged a higher renewal fee?
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).
The tools included in with the purchase of the domain are:
- Channel Builder: Seamlessly integrated with a .TV purchase, users can create a full-functioning video-centric website “Channel”, including a choice of pre-designed themes and easy-to-use video management tools.
- Grab It® Bookmarklet: Users can browse top video sites and with a single click “grab” embed code and links for their favorite videos, allowing for quick and easy programming of their own .TV Channels. All “grabbed” video links are displayed live in the users .TV content archive, which can then be used to create custom playlists.
- Social Networking Tools: Each .TV Channel is its own social networking site, featuring private or public profiles, blogs, message boards, on-site messaging, user ratings, favorites, friends lists, comments, and photo albums.
The keynote for the re-release of the domain is being webcast today at 6pm PST on the AlwaysOn conference website, which also features an article on Carson Daly joining Demand Media in the promotion of the .tv TLD.
[...] Registration of one of the newly available domains is also being packaged with a ME.TV social-networking toolkit. DomainEditorial reported some sample sites built with the new tools are: CarsonDaly.tv and ambler.tv. Frank Schilling commented on how this will affect the value of CNETs TV.com domain, making it worth many millions of dollars. [...]
The renewal fees have always been the cost of the initial registration that is nothing new. No successful sites will not pay more if you regged http://www.sd.tv for $1000 then it will be $1000 no matter how long you keep it registered. ENOM put this in an FAQ on their site. I disagree that this increases any value for tv.com I mentioned that to Frank before CNET is a public company that has been going nowhere for a long time maybe they need to sell their generic domains to increase value.
Great blog would love to add dottvnation.tv to the links and place yours on our links.
Thank you
@eq78:
If they are not planning to increase renewal fees, why does it state right before you sign up that the fees are subject to change? The fees are firstly set by the registry operator, Verisign, who unfortunately has a history of trying to increase pricing when costs are getting lower and lower (see .com).
Frequently Asked Questions about .TV Premium Domain Names
Premium Name Pricing
Will the renewal rate ever go up?
Annual renewal fees for .TV premium names will be the same as the initial “Buy Now” registration price. Demand Media is required by law to also inform its customers that renewal prices are subject to change. This is because, as a retailer, Demand Media doesnt determine or control the cost of names; they are set by VeriSign, who is the official .TV registry
.
Is VeriSign reserving the right to change a registrant’s renewal price sometime in the future, post registration?
Verisign will honor the original contract that the registrant entered into. The terms under which their premium .TV name was registered at the time of registration will be constant for as long as they hold that name.
So I agree these two FAQ’s do seem to contradict I can say in the time Verisign has run .tv they have not raised renewals while a domain was registered and not dropped.
Again Frank if you would like to exchange links please let me know.
Thank you