Demand Media, the company responsible for marketing the premium side of the dot tv domain name extension, recently raised another $35M in Series D Funding.  However, its unclear where it intends to invest this money as its dot tv business is only one of many.

The geo (short for geography or geographical) domain space is becoming red hot, particular in the dot tv extension since the extension lends itself particularly well to the kind of coverage one might show on a geographically oriented site.  For example, Vanuatu dot TV…

Every day Richard Rosenblatt sits in his office, thinking about what Demand Media must to for the dot tv extension to reach the tipping point, which is the point at which the rate of adoption, growth, and public awareness of the dot tv extension increase exponentially. Some investors in the dot tv extension feel that Richard should focus his resources on running ads on television, the very medium the Internet threatens.

However, most of these domainers fail to understand that Richard believes that mass end-user adoption and the success of the dot tv extension shall only come with the success of the Channel Me venture, which is just one of numerous projects that consumes Demand’s resources, including labor and capital. Channel Me embodies Richard’s idea of “selling the overall experience of hosted solutions instead of the more technical concept of hosting itself.”

Will Richard’s strategy succeed? Will 2008 be the breakout year for dot tv assuming Channel Me achieves the kind of success Demand and its investors anticipate? 

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…

WHIR TV recently interviewed Richard, but the site only produced a transcript because the audio had some problems.  The interview covered Richard’s history, what Demand Media does, and where its going as a social media company.  WHIR TV described what Demand Media does as clever because it is essentially selling Web hosting and domaining in the form of a social media site for consumers. 

I pulled some questions and responses that I liked in particular.  Check these out in addition to the link to the full interview after the jump!

One of the reasons I enjoy writing this blog is because it puts me in touch with some people that I might not meet in my daily life.

Either through email or at conferences, I meet some very interesting people and exciting .tv projects they have in the works.  Of course, I am naturally curious about how they got involved in .tv and what was it that finally attracted them to the extension if they previously invested in other extensions.  More specifically, what was the tipping point to invest in .tv…

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! 

According to Richard Rosenblatt:

Demand Media has sold more than twice as many .tv domains in the last three months than VeriSign sold all of last year.

This is the statement he made at HostingCon 2007, according to thewhire.com.

Richard explained his vision of giving people what they want and bundling it with a .tv domain name: 

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. 

There is no doubt that John Van Den Berg has been a big player in the .tv after market recently. I had the good fortune of dealing with John in my sale to him of De.tv.

John, in our telephone discussion, came across as very polite, professional, good natured and to the point. It is something I had already heard about him from others who have had business dealings with him.

I asked John if he would be kind enough to give my viewers an inside look at doing things “John’s way”.