I am delighted to announce that Craig Meichen has joined Allthings as a guest blogger. I will be posting Craig’s introductory blog under my name whilst we get him set up with his admin rights, but for future posts Craig will be posting under his own name.

I will be interviewing Craig over the weekend so that everybody can get to hear his strong Aussie accent and learn a little more about his vision and passion for the .tv extension.

For now, Craig has asked me to post the following introduction…

About fifteen years ago, the Web really took a hold of our lives. In that time .com has become the be all and end all as far as website extensions are concerned.

Sure there are other extensions that try and compete but .com holds them at bay with ease. When you think of the internet and websites you think .com!

Fast forward to 2006, just last year, and an absolute phenomenon was unfolding before our eyes in the form of video on the internet. With the advent of faster broadband connection speeds, watching video on the net has become common place, everywhere you look there is video.

There are sites galore that allow you to watch whatever you want to watch; the choice is yours, not the networks controlling mass programming.

.tv is the perfect extension to take a hold of this era of on demand video, it is the first tld to really have meaning, and that meaning is known the world over as television.

They would have to be the two most recognized letters on the planet! I am willing to bet more of the world recognizes what tv stands for than what com stands for.

Tv has had the luxury of the last fifty years for its marketing to take a hold of us, it is embedded in our psyche as the place to watch and be entertained.

That is why an opportunity exists for .tv to take some ground off .com and really make an impact on the future of the internet and leisure time as we know it.

The figures for .tv registrations point to this already, findings released by VeriSign tell us that .tv had 100 percent year-over-year growth in registrations - none of the other tld’s come close to that sort of growth.

The time is ripe for those who own .tv names to really make an impact on the future of entertainment and information. We have the opportunity to build and develop video centric websites that both inform and entertain the viewer.

It is an opportunity, that allows individuals to compete for viewers alongside the large networks, not only for viewers but for the advertising dollars aswell.

A popular website built around a niche subject is invaluable to any advertiser. Targeted audiences are what advertisers dream of.

The beauty of the web is that it is basically a free and open marketplace, so with some fresh ideas and shrewd marketing, .tv websites are possibly the greatest opportunity to compete on a large scale with the multi nationals.

My involvement with .tv started back in January 07 when a friend started working for Demand Media. I did some research and recognized Richard Rosenblatt from articles I had read in the past and so I took a deeper look into what he was up to.

When I read about .tv and the premium names Demand Media had taken control of, I thought it was a perfect time to buy a few names, hold onto them until Demand Media promoted the extension and then I would be able to just sell them on for a profit six months down the line.

However after reading about and researching the domain industry in general, I saw the timing was perfect to develop some of the names I had acquired into websites that suited the .TV extension.

At the moment I have three sites in development and have plans for many more to be rolled out over the next year or two.

I have invested time and money over the years in both property development and the stock market and continue to do so but to be honest, development of websites is the most fun I have had “working” in my life, nothing I have come across before gives you the opportunity to use your imagination as well as business skills to bring a project together like the internet does.

As a final note I want to thank the network of likeminded people I have met since I started on this path a few short months ago, I am happy to know you all and even happier that I can now call you friends!  Thanks for the help and guidance you have provided.