Brian Berke Says:
Steve,
No surprise that I agree with you 100%
In a recent chat I had with a station manager of a Major Network affiliate he said ” We see .TV as being the future of online TV media and we want to be apart of what that brand means to our city.” I had sent him an e-mail about my city .tv domain and got a call within 24 hours from him.
Why? because .TV means something to people when they hear about it. They understand the brand.
Steve, what you are writing of is just one more way .TV means something and like you say Steve, development is the key to uncloaking these riches. Riches that no PPC model can even come close to.
It is really interesting to me to see how so many people fail to realize that domaining and running a business are two different things.
My background is in the entertainment industry. I know how to produce content and have a deep contacts in the industry. That is why I was drawn to .TV because I saw all the money being flooded into that space by major media companies. Much of this has not hit the web yet and will be backed by major ad campaigns and media exposure on traditional TV.
This over time will help brand the power of .TV in the public’s minds and make it more intuitive as the play to go to watch online video.
I am following the real world media money I see being spent, not the domaining money. Numerous .TV premiums that cost 5K and up per year are being taken off the board but very few know about this as it is not being reported by the DN Journal.
Many many 5 figure geo .tv sales in the aftermarket are not being reported. I have been a part of numerous ones. There is a major group of people flying under the radar right now buying chunks of these real estate up. The time is coming for us to hit the mainstream soon.
I was at DomainFest this year. I stood up and asked Frank Schilling a question. I said ” Frank, I have a background in the entertainment industry and I am seeing a ton of money being pured into .TV development.” I said, “what do you think of .TV as far as development.” I was careful not mention the PPC model as I know .TV is weak there. That is not its brand. It is about development and meeting an expectation of what TV means to people.
Frank said “.TV is bad for PPC” He kept harping on this and ignoring my question about .TV as far as development. That was not my point. My point was that .TV will be shoved in peoples faces on TV just like major League baseball does with MLB.TV, but Frank went into auto pilot on the PPC model. Someone else asked Frank “Where will the Internet be in 10 years” and he said “Very much the same place with PPC thriving”.
Now, I admire Frank to a great degree. His success speaks for itself. He is very articulate and a great ambassador to the industry. He is a class act.
My point is that his vision is not the only one and certainly not the one that may work best long term IMO. Of course PPC is great for some, but long term development will trump all IMO.
PPC gives you a head start no doubt, but I am seeing first hand so do generic .TV name that means something to people. They want to be apart of this. Hollywood is embracing it and slowly over time the public is becoming aware of the dynamic new web url (they do not care about its history as a ccTLD, it is new and fresh to them for online video) that transfers what they already know and puts it online.
See this is what it boils down to as far as .TV, Why the traditional domainers like Frank never liked it. It has always been different. It stared as a ccTLD as we know, but also, there was a Premium fee attached. This infuriated many domainers. They were playing by different rules. I understand why this turned many off. However, I also saw a tremendous opening that this created for on point development apart from domaining where the premium fees matter.. Now these premium fees are no more than a small price to do business with a distinct brand advantage that will be more and more intuitive over time.
For example, One of my Geo Domains is PalmSprings.tv This domain name costs me $500 per year to own. Now to me that is chump changed compared to the brand advantage I will have in being the online TV station for the City of Palm Springs on the web if I can meet that expectation. It is a small tax write off. If PalmSprings.tv was $7 per year would I have been able to register this in May of 2007 when I got it? I turned down a 5K offer a few months after I got it.
I was dumbfounded that after the Demand Media released these premium names back in May of last year that I could still get them in 2007!. I stayed up late into the night and planned and waited at my computer to register them at the exact time I knew they would be available. This was a gold rush of a different kind that me and several others were involved in while most domainers either did not know or did not care.
History will look back on that as another missed opportunity for many missed the boat IMO. In February of last year, I went out and contacted every single .TV city owner in the top 250 and made quiet deals in the aftermarket for many city names that are non premium ($25 per year) like KeyWest.tv FortWorth.tv SaltLakeCity.tv while many others were fighting to get 5th and 6th tier .com domains.
Turns out many prime .TV names not premiums at all and many that are are just a small price for getting a tremendous brand advantage that would be millions in the .com space. The technology was not there until recently to make .TV pay off.
The net is only in the late forties IMO compared to development of where traditional TV was when it started. There is no doubt that .TV is already providing a huge alternative to .com in the online media space, that means something universally.
This is not to say .comers will not continue to be successful but a new bread is coming that will change the web over the next decades IMO.
Yahoo is doing great even though it passed on buying Google for 1 million.
IBM is still a monster company even though it chose not to buy Microsoft’s operating software and instead license it.
Hewlett-Packard is still a huge company even though it passed on its ownership rights to the Apple Computer.
The question is not if .TV will take off, if you look back over the last few years you would understand it already has begun to take off. Now its just a matter of how far it will go in the coming years. Get used to more .comers coming into the .TV space and with it a nice healthy infusion of cash to make up for lost time.
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George Pickering Says:
Not Frank Schilling Says:
Fin Says:
Ken Says:
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