Today I posted on the Namepros .tv subforum a list of .tv sites that are up for sale. 101 names to be exact.

I have more .tv names, not that many more, but I didn’t post any names that I have part ownership in as obviously this would require both parties to agree to the selling price and in any case I am hoping to develop some of those names, so I am happy to keep those off my sell list for the time being.

As a huge fan of .tv, many might question why I am putting so many of my .tv names up for sale. Do I know anything about .tv that others do not? Am I privy to information that would tell any .tv portfolio holder to cash in their chips??

Absolutely not!!

You may want to monitor this situation as the the Federal Communication Commission ("FCC") issued a Notice of Inquiry on the subject of regulating the Internet.  Such regulation may impact video on the Internet more than any other online segment.  Fortunately, three Internet content and application service providers, including MovieFlix, Doctors TeleHealth, and KinderStart, filed formal comments in response to that inquiry. 

Net Neutrality is nothing new, but it is likely to continue to be a big political issue.  Here is a video from one organization, which attempts to sum up the issue:

Ron Jackson of Dn Journal believes that the upcoming Traffic conference on June 19th will have a major effect on the entire domaining industry.

He states:  The most important T.R.A.F.F.I.C. domain conference to date is coming up June 19-22 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City. This key event will put domains front and center in the media capital of the world and is likely to have a major impact on the future course of the entire industry.

Ron is probably right. But I want to talk about its impact not on the entire industry but on one small portion of it – the .tv extension.

In a recent article by Frank Schilling, as noted below in Kevin’s blog, Frank basically imparts the advice that fighting against the .com tide is a waste of energy.....

I invited Frank for an interview to discuss the merits of .com versus .tv, but Frank politely declined the invitation. Shame, because it would have been a real eye opener for everyone.

Frank did however point out that had he invested all his names in .tv in 2000 instead of .com - he would not be rich today and he doubts that Richard Rosenblatt would be taking his calls today had he bought .tv’s instead of .coms......

Well, I have responded to Frank’s remarks and hope that Frank posts them on his site. I will post my comments here aswell. I think mine is a very powerful counter argument....

Here is a copy of what I posted on Frank’s blog:

While my partner basks in the sun of what VeriSign VP, Ryanor Dahlquist, spouted about .tv, Frank Schilling continues to do whatever he can in his blog to reinforce .com branding and take cheap shots at the one extension that has the power to attract investors away from the .com extension.

The title of the blog in question starts out, “What’s wrong with .biz domain names?”

Frank states, “You can register a .biz name and market the heck out of it, but 90% of the rest of the world is reinforcing the .com extension in branding, advertising and media. It is a dot com world and fighting against that global Internet standard (created by the world’s web site owners) is an exercise in futility. Buy anything but a .com (or the CCtld of your populous country) and make your life unnecessarily hard.”

I bet more of the world recognizes what tv stands for than what com stands for…

A recent statement made by VeriSign VP Raynor Dahlquist that:

“Throughout the world, the phrase ‘TV’ means world-class entertainment, which explains why major broadcast networks, sports leagues, gaming sites and training organizations have adopted the .tv extension for their business. This trend shows every sign of continued growth.”

was backed up by another finding released by VeriSign, that “.tv had 100 percent year-over-year growth in registrations”, absolutely annihilating all other extensions as far as year over year growth is concerned.

Those of us that monitor the extension with any degree of interest would not be at all surprised – either by the fact that .tv has beat out all other extensions in year over year growth, or by that huge factor of 100%.

Here are my thoughts as to why .tv has had this huge surge over the last year.

I received a pleasant surprise in my email today that I thought I would pass on to the AllThings.tv audience.

An industry colleague forwarded a press release over email to me from Rider Research (http://www.riderresearch.com), which publishes a weekly digital media newsletter. 

Rider recently produced a report called, “Video Vision 2007: A Survey of Web Sites Offering Video.”

Rider concluded that it would be a vast understatement to say that video on the Internet exploded in the last year. 

Apparently, the conclusion is based on a finding in the report that “the number of Web sites that offer entertainment and information videos increased in the last year from about 200 to over 300.”

Many of you know Richard Rosenblatt, former CEO and chairman of MySpace, co-founded Demand Media, the company behind me.tv, which empowers anybody to launch their own online channel and website on the .tv domain extension; Demand Media bought the exclusive rights to relaunch the .tv extension.

Steve Sivulka, former creator of Stupidvideos.com, launched Easysite.com, which was over a year in the making.  Like me.tv, Easysite.com is an alternative to web portals such as MySpace and Friendster.