Thanks to smashfactory over at NamePros for bringing this to our attention:

2007 ended with a total base of just over 58 million ccTLD domain name registrations.  The ccTLDs as a whole experienced six percent growth quarter over quarter and 33 percent growth year over year. The largest ccTLDs saw moderate growth or slowing in the fourth quarter. For example, only eight of the top 20 largest ccTLDs increased the size of their base at a rate faster than then they did in the third quarter. Of those, the growth rate of only two grew at rates greater than one percentage point; .cn’s growth rate grew at just over six percentage points and .fr grew at just over one percentage point over the previous quarter…

Many dot tv enthusiasts argue that the number one thing that the dot tv extension can benefit from most is a commercial on broadcast television or Verisign’s doing away with the premium pricing structure, but I believe the dot tv extension can benefit more from a general increase in the number of those interested in buying, selling, and developing domain names.

As the stock market and real estate markets (traditional sources for investment) fail to generate returns,…

After I picked up on the other two stories related to domain tasting (Google Adsense and the Name Tasting Study), I discovered a story on DN Journal that suggests that “ICANN is about to effectively end domain tasting” based on minutes from the organization’s most recent meeting.  Link after the jump…

If one company can pull it off, a domain name stock market would be amazing. 

Unfortunately, just as there are multiple financial stock markets, there will be multiple domain name stock markets. 

I caught up today with a friend who is both a domain investor and developer, he told me about Fusu, a new website that claims to be “The Domain Stock Exchange.” No word on whether the site will be dot tv (.tv) friendly unlike many of the current auction sites, but only time will tell.

How does Fusu work?

As with a traditional Stock Exchange, Fusu allows its participants to get liquidity from their assets. On Fusu, holders of a premium domain (i.e Vodka.com) can devote a fraction of their domain to the market and immediately get money out of it without having to give up its control at any time. In return, stockholders in the domain name will get their share in future sales or advertising revenues generated by the domain name.

Can the domain industry really be that big to support such a thing?

The company suggests that the market value could reach $4 billion by 2010…

Last week, exoticcars.tv sold for $2,375 according to SEDO’s home page.  Following the most notable dot tv sales reported earlier this month, this is yet another strong sale for the extension especially considering that its a two-word domain name with a decent overture score of almost 20,000 for just the terms “exotic car.”

Late last month, Brightspot.tv shut the lights of to its website off to “develop the next iteration of the service,” which rewarded consumers for watching advertisements. For more info, see this article, which was courtesy of SKG of NamePros. 

More news after the jump…

Rational domain investors and web developers can agree that .com is and will remain king for the foreseeable future since it was the first domain extension to both gain widespread adoption and receive millions of ad dollars in promotional advertising in the form of print and broadcast ads. 

We also know that whatever site that can be built on a .tv domain name can be built on ANY domain name in ANY domain extension.  So why all the hype surrounding dot tv?

Combining select domain names with TV and print ads brings maximum ROI to advertisers

You may have noticed recently the increase in websites associated with your favorite TV or print ads. This is not a fluke and the trend is certain to continue according to one Internet marketing expert.

Scott Alliy President of eComInvestments.com a domain name brokerage often wonders why the tremendous one two punch advertising approach has not been used more up until now.

Scott claims that obtaining domain names containing niche phrases can extend the benefits and life span of any print or TV marketing campaign well beyond the number of days the ads actually are shown publicly.

As video-sharing sites such as YouTube are gaining popularity all over the world, the `.tv’ domain is drawing more attention.

[D]ozens of home-grown video-sharing and Internet broadcasting sites...are using the ``.tv’’ domain as it is easily related to television or video.

According to Verisign, the operator of the `.tv’ domain, about 70 percent of its users wanted to extend their contracts, which is significantly higher than 60 percent of `.com’ users or 10 percent of `.net’ owners.

A total of 1,460 new `.tv’ domains were registered between January and July this year, up from 483 registrations in the same period last year.

These are quotes I picked up from a Korean newspaper, the full text and link can be found after the jump.