Ten years ago, the tiny island state of Tuvalu in the South Pacific struck a lucrative internet deal to rent out one of its national treasures. Now, with the growth of broadband on a global scale, the atoll islanders are set to reap even greater rewards for their prime asset – their dot tv domain extension.
As more and more consumers get broadband in, companies of all sizes are investigating how they can boost sales with online multimedia presentations to explain and demonstrate goods and services. But rather than being simply an addition to an existing site, some companies are looking to build mini video sites to show off their wares. And the natural progression towards a TV channel of their own is now the .tv version of their domain.
Originally, .tv was the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Tuvalu. The deal to roll out .tv as an abbreviation for television instead was struck with the world’s largest domain name company VeriSign, who operate dot TV via The .tv Corporation. Except for a few reserved names, anyone can purchase a dot tv domain online.
In December last year, VeriSign struck a trading partnership to promote .tv as the preferred web address for rich media content. Their new venture with Demand Media, run by ex-MySpace chair Richard Rosenblatt, is ChannelMe.tv, which is marketing the domain extension to businesses and consumers for “personal TV channels” and online video sites.
The cost of registering a .tv domain varies. ChannelMe.tv, for example, is currently offering .tv domains with two years registration for $49.90 (£25.78). By comparison, a UK based registrar, 123-reg.co.uk, offered the same deal for £72.73 inc VAT.
But a word of caution is necessary. It is not clear from the ChannelMe.tv what the deal is with their domain package, how much it costs to transfer a domain away, or how much direct management users have via a Control Panel. They do say they can be pointed at any web site.
Interestingly, ChannelMe.tv state they will be launching over the next few months, simple, easy-to-use tools that will allow users to build their own channel. These tools are intended to help users to:
• feature legal, licensed content and embed it in web sites
• upload videos for immediate posting
• build a community on your channel using state-of-the-art social networking tools
• Customise a .tv site to reflect personal interests
Although going after the same traffic as bebo.com, MySpace and YouTube, ChannelMe.tv are not ignoring the business user. They have showcased a few ideas on their site, including Surfing TV and Business TV
So who might benefit from a .tv web development of this kind?
Obviously, some businesses are inherently more suitable than others. Tourism operators are one such type of company. So, too, are manufacturers or firms supplying goods to consumers or business to business.
Imagine, for example, that you manufacture wind turbines in the Highlands and Islands. A dot tv site would be ideal to showcase company skills in action, a demo of the manufacturing process for instance, video of a turbine installation or a walk through of the various wind turbine models and their applications. It’s a well-worn cliché, but the only limit is imagination. And because the .tv domain extension is closely associated with dynamic video content, users and search engines should find your video much more easily than might otherwise be the case.
The biggest problem may not be the content, but which name to choose. A number of names have been reserved. These are premium or generic names that have been taken off the market to ensure equal opportunity for everyone interested in registering a particular premium name.
Evidently, action.tv is one of them…and so is nothing-on.tv. Maybe, if I am successful in buying these two domains, I should sell the former and use the latter to stream live video from my office. Although, for the avoidance of the doubt that nothing-on.tv could raise, I shall be sitting at my desk, tapping away at my keyboard, fully clothed.
