Daily Domainer

Are you ready for .tv? Since its introduction in 1996, the readily marketable ccTLD has had quite a journey.

Technically, the .tv domain is the ccTLD for Tuvalu, a remote island nation located halfway between Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. But in 2000, a deal was negotiated to effectively lease the country’s TLD for $1 million per quarter to DotTV , a private company set up to manage Tuvalu’s ccTLD.

DotTV eventually came under the umbrella of VeriSign, and even though .tv was marginally profitable for dotTV, Verisign felt there was more that could be done.

In December 2006, a deal was announced effectively turning over management of the .tv TLD to DemandMedia. DemandMedia had recently acquired enom and BulkRegister and was the brainchild of Richard Rosenblatt. VeriSign entrusted DemandMedia to turn the slow performing .tv into the next big thing.

Rosenblatt was fresh off his sale of MySpace to News Corp. when the idea behind DemandMedia was revealed to him. He was going to create not just another user-generated content site like MySpace, but but an entire empire of domains filled with this kind of content. In addition to Deman Media's mainstream domain portfolio, .tv is another essential part of this strategy. By owning the registrar and content generation suite, DemandMedia is in a position to change the way people think about .tv domains. Factor in revenue from advertising, and the company stands to make money on every step of the process.

One of the first actions DemandMedia took with .tv domains was to freeze 53,000 premium .tv domain names that were anticipated to be in high demand. The list price for these domains ranges from $52 for gaps.tv to $500,000 for business.tv. On May 1, 2007 these domains became available for public sale, and within the first 24 hours, sales totaled approximately $500,000 even though renewal fees and procedures are unclear.

Simultaneously, DemandMedia rolled out me.tv, a new social networking suite for personal video sites. Picture MySpace, with a twist. Users can link to friends, share photo albums and of course show off their own version of what a TV channel should be. But as opposed to MySpace, each personal video site is on its own .tv domain.

DemandMedia has enlisted Carson Daly as its celebrity spokesman and is expected to showcase several A-list celebrities in the coming weeks. Of course, Richard Rosenblatt also has his own me.tv page.

Will .tv have a chance to take off? Yes, if Demand Media provides clear guidance on actual renewal fees. Right now, buyers of premium .tv domains do not know what they are getting themselves into and whether the amount pay is a once-off purchase price or an annual renewal fee.