Did you miss me?

Forgive me for going MIA for so long; it was not my intention.  The last few weeks, I devoted my time to consulting on a few development projects, spent some time working on my own portfolio, and sold my first home. 

Some observations I wanted to share involve the future of the dot tv extension.  The extension has incredible promise, but currently the pace that companies adopt the dot tv extension is not as fast as many of us would like it to be.  This should change as the public’s awareness of the dot tv extension grows and understanding of the purpose of those letters that come after the dot in every domain name should mean.  Dot com was first, that is the default extension instilled in people’s heads.  The public was not taught what .com means or stands for nor were they told to question it. 

I imagine that over time and through repetitive visits to dot tv sites (or exposure to dot tv ads), they will either become enlightened that .tv implies interactive content or begin to wonder what in the heck dot com really stands for...leading them to the ultimate question of asking why not use dot tv if delivering video content to the world is the site’s purpose.  After all, video is the future and dot tv just fits better than dot com. 

Recently, Brightcove announced it would be using the dot tv extension…

In a wrap up of the recent HostingCon 2007 event, I discovered this passage:

In the presentation, the CEO and chairman of Demand Media encouraged the capacity crowd to rethink their approach to how they market hosting solutions to businesses and individuals.  Using his ChannelMe.tv venture as a focal example, Rosenblatt argued that Web hosts should sell the overall experience of hosted solutions instead of the more technical concept of hosting itself.

I am aware that Go Daddy representatives were at this event and probably took Richard’s words seriously…

Currently, GoDaddy is advertising .tv pricing at $14.99 per year.  If you EVER thought about registering some .tv names or renewing other non premium names, now is the time.  It would be difficult to believe that this will be available for the long term.

Indeed, I said renewals too!  Drop me an email, IM, or PM if you have more than just a couple of .tv names that you want to renew and I will get you in touch with a GoDaddy representative who can streamline the process of obtaining this once-in-a-lifetime discount.  I noticed that the reason some people have not taken advantage of this discounted renewal pricing is that they do not want to move away from the tools offered by eNom.  One solution is to renew as many years as you can through GoDaddy and then return to eNom by paying for one year renewal there.

This should probably be reserved for those domains not already on the Channelme.tv network since nobody knows what happens when you leave eNom and return.  There is a chance you lose all of your posts, videos, forums, etc.  That would be bad if you invested a significant amount of time on developed your channel.

(end of post)

While watching videos on Revver, I discovered the new ChannelMe.tv ad campaign tonight.  The campaign is part of Demand Media’s marketing effort to promote that network and provide exposure to the .tv extension to the masses, or more specifically the MySpace crowd, which is enormous. 

Recently, REVVER opened up its network to pre-roll video ads and allows the video creators to decide whether pre-roll ads run in front of the content they submit to the site.  The ad I saw was a post-roll video ad.  The ad was impressive because it was animated and did a good job of selling what a user could do with their own .tv domain name. 

I was able to take 8 clear screenshots so you could an idea of the campaign, but this in no way does the campaign justice because the ad was fully animated.  I surfed REVVER a bit more and saw a different ChannelMe.tv ad as part of the campaign.  That ad flashed a bunch of prominent .tv sites. 

Screenshot #1 of the ChannelMe.tv Ad Campaign on REVVER
(More Screenshots On The Jump)

More screenshots on the jump!