If you even thought the dot tv extension was losing steam, ShoeTube.tv officially launched today.  The ShoeTube dot tv domain name says it all, its an online video channel dedicated to shoes, offering all of the social community features that many new sites offer today.  Check out the press release…

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.

There is no doubt that Me.tv is in its early phase of development.

There are bugs that need fixing, templates that need improving, monetization and revenue sharing options that whilst at the time of the writing of this article are not yet available, they are in the pipeline and should be available very soon.

Innovative bells and whistles are being introduced daily, yet undoubtedly Me.tv will be the first to admit that they have plenty of work to do and that Me.tv is not a completed project, but a work in progress.

The question though remains – will Me.tv turn out to be just a cool alternative of a YouTube home page; those who want a little more exclusivity and a lot less spam?

Or perhaps it will be restricted to those who don’t mind shelling out $25 for a .tv name, giddy with anticipation that somewhere down the line they can turn a small profit through monetization of the site.

Take a look at the site and it looks like there’s nothing to shout about. This site clearly is a social networking site for people in the Portland Maine area and it would seem that its main objective is to get members to upload videos that matter to them onto the site for fellow residents or the rest of the world for that matter, to comment on.

One can see the power of local over global when you take a look at how many views a local band, “How to undress ” has had on PortlandMaine.tv - 1357 and counting. Yet on You Tube, it has had less than 800 views in total.

This site was started in the beginning of May and has had over 50,000 page views to date. The owner of the site, Jack Joyce, is fully expecting the site to hit 200,000 page views in the coming month, ( if not more) because he has just landed a deal of a life time.

The Internet continues to flip traditional industries on their heads, and politics is not immune from its influence either. 

In the past, political candidates relied on paid advertisements, printed materials, public appearances and informational websites to get their political messages out.  But publishing their message, policies, and interests on a website is no longer adequate as a candidate’ s Internet strategy. 

Ccube rolled out a new click-to-call feature on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook to allow members to instantly connect with the click of a button without ever having to reveal their personal contact information.  I imagine this is an example of the second round of technologies to come out of the new wave of Web 2.0 technologies that will focus on connecting and bridging the gaps between social networking sites and networks.

Previously, members within those communities and networks were limited to sharing phones, videos, and written text so this technology empowers users to transition from virtual to real-time interactions.  This is likely to become a trend because humans crave real interaction.  It would be no surprise if this technology succeeded given the popularity of VoIP and the calls that can be made using instant messenging system.