I attended a dinner party that I almost did not make because I really was not interested in going. In fact, I pulled off the freeway and thought about saving myself the half an hour I would sit in traffic and meet up with some friends who I had not seen for almost 8 years. Something in me said to go so I pulled back onto the freeway, fought traffic, and pulled into the driveway.
Keep in mind, most people at this party either have no experience in the Internet world or they have experience with real property and no experience in the Internet world. Consequently, they do not truly understand the state of the Internet and the direction it is going.
Back to the story: I am introduced to a man in his mid to late forties. He used to develop Internet properties for other companies, he was offered jobs at some of the major price comparison companies that you see on the Internet, and he now works closely with video game companies. Nevertheless, we enter an engaging discussion about the Internet and online domains as property, like real estate. Meanwhile, nobody around can believe we are nerding out on this and they sure do not fully grasp the depth of the conversation.
So I decide to take the conversation for a turn and I say, what do you know about Tuvalu (this is the test I use to gauge whether another person is really on the cutting edge of or really knows about the .tv world; I am looking for people like us).
You should have seen his face. He said I don't think I have ever heard of Tuvalu. Well, that marked him off as providing what I would consider a credible assessment of .tv's potential. Needless to say, he felt .com was king and I could not disagree, but we differed in our opinions of the potential of .tv. He felt that anybody could register a .com and do whatever they wanted. Why would they need a .tv? I respected his point but I also felt that he could be underestimating .tv's potential. Of course, there is nothing a company needs from a .tv that it could not accomplish with a .com, but the premium words for .com are all taken while .tv premiums are still available. Obviously, the super premiums 10k/year are not really candidates for individuals to develop unless they start out with quite a bit of money, but for certain general keywords that are premium .tv names, someone can easily compete in the marketplace on equal footing, well almost equal.
I gave him an example. Suppose I own rally.tv and someone else owns rally.com. Now, these domains rely on the same keyword: rally. If I build a site that has video and begin to develop links and more people go to my website because I have entertainment before the .com guy, then I will get higher placement in the search engines. Assuming the other guys does not harness entertainment like streaming videos in the way I have, I will begin to climb higher in search engines and begin to chip away at his search engine market share assuming our businesses rely on search engine placement. If I am lucky, maybe I can become a top player. WHen you look at the cost of such domains in light of this potential, certain .tv names are cheap relative to the market opportunity they offer to individuals or companies looking to break into a market.
Of course, he recognized my point but he did not believe .tv was going to be much more than it is now because it has been around awhile. The reason I think he was wrong in his assessment is because .tv will become synonymous with TV as the two converge (see www.akimbo.com for an example). As it does, any company can develop and broadcast their own channels or video content over the net. Because .tv premium names cost significantly more than .com or any other extension (at least this is what they are known for amongst the public), they are like the park place and boardwalk of the game monopoly. The more they are developed for their best uses, the more they are worth (if park place and boardwalk have hotels, they are worth more too!). MOre and more companies will want to separate their normal websites clearly from their broadcast channels.
Given the amount of promotion for Internet TV and the companies leverage the .tv domain space for these purposes, I expect other companies will want to do the same. If you see 8 out of 10 advertisements for entertainment at .tv addresses, why would the companies running the other 2 advertisements for entertainment at a .com address? Some will always continue to leverage their .com addresses for entertainment, but in five years you were looking for streaming video developed or broadcasted by some company, is it more likely that you would type in that company's name with .tv or .com at the end?
Keep in mind. I am not an expert and this could all be wrong. It is 100% my opinion. Someone please correct me if any element of this is untrue, false or misguided. Comments and clarification are welcome. Anyway, I thought it was a story you guys would enjoy reading. If we are ahead of the curve, some guys who have been around and involved since web 1.0 could be missing the boat that we left on and that is starting to sale.
PS: More and more of my .tv names are getting offers and the more popular ones are getting offers more frequently. All the nay sayers would say that is an indicator of nothing, but I tend not to believe them.
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The problem with .TV is that the owners act exactly like landowners
with NO limit to their greed.
Say you have 2 competitors gizmo.com and gizmo.tv ...
Over time who do you think will offer their customers more
for less ?
Answer: the one who doesn't have ANY rent to pay.
Remember the better product doesn't always win the market.
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Going with your theory of offering more for less - take cop.com and cop.tv - cop.com would sell for how much - $100,000, $250,000 - cop.tv is going for a negotiable $500 per year......which of these two names do you think will need to recoup their interest payments and quarter of a million investment more ?? And whom do you think will be helping pay off those payments and investment price tag?? Take a guess.....
Excellent point there ... but try that with some of the really premium
domains ... and remember cop.tv might be 500.00$ now but wait till
they see you succeed and renewal time comes around ... bottom line
with .TV you just got yourself a greedy partner who wants to do nothing
and get more and more as time goes ... and also try to sell premium
domains ... they will sell with RENT money to be paid on top of it ...
all this to say that it doesn't mean that someone can't make a killing with a
.TV, its just that the economics are not the same.
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Last edited by cosmicray : 09-25-2006 at 09:08 AM.
Renewals do not go up and this is a topic that has been addressed several times, Guess what the standard price for LLL.tv is now $750 but names that were registered at $250 and $500 are still renewed at that price.
Secondly Millers is 100 % right KIDS.tv in the HRTS auction went for $10,,100 Kids.com is a minimum $500,000 IMO. and the beauty of that auction is its $50 to renew afterward that was a special auction perk.
Thirdly you can negotiate prices and it seems they are becoming even more open to bigger discounts.
The main guy at .tv Scott Higgason Left so it will be interesting to see what they do next.
Paying a premium sucks but if you have a real idea it is actually a benefit because the premium name in .com would cost 10 to 100 times more. Some of the prices you see are just there for show no one pays them when FIT.tv dropped they put it at $1500 I told a member here about it he got it for much less per year.
Plus there are many names not categorized as premium I regged Everything.tv for $30 What would everything.com cost $50,000 -$100,000?
The benefit is the intuitive nature of the ext and that there are plenty of premium domains still available for A serious entrepreneur. .tv is Not a domainer ext Verisign has always stated that in every conversation I have had with them about .tv . They were like we know if we went to $30 for LLL.tv they would all be regged by domainers we don't want that.
I agree Silicon more sites will separate their Corporate site/ecom and their Entertainment /Multimedia Scripps has owned and run hgtv.com for a long time they just regged HG.tv at $1000 a year and a lot of LL.tv are priced at $10,000 I think that a little high but companies will pay that. $1000 is a lot for a hobbyist not a company doing anything over $500,000 IMO
On the flip side I think surfers will look for more out of a .tv site. I mean design and content wise so you have to put some effort into it if you develop a .tv need to make it multimedia and fast too I do not think the surfer will tolerate slow running multimedia sites that take forever to show clips or other entertainment. IMO
You hit the nail on the head. .TV gives you access. Access to general names like Everything.tv. Would we, today, have an opportunity to pick up everything.com? Not in a million years unless we paid through the nose for it. The fact that most of us are average joes not multi gazillionaires (at least not yet) means that a general keyword such as everything was out of reach. Interestly, many people stayed away from .tv because of the higher prices. GoDaddy popularized the notion of cheap domains so people felt that .tv was too much. They might have figured they should drop the money in marketing and developing a different site, like an off-name dot com, rather than paying for a premium in the .tv domain space. Now that more and more companies are realizing the power of .tv just as a multimedia brand and how .tv can be incorporated into their Internet offerings, we are starting to see a trend of massive .tv activity. Just check out http://news.pr.com where I am now trying to gather all press releases and new related to the .tv landscape and Internet TV.
