Kudos To The Verisign dotTV Team

I just wanted to publicly say thank you to the product management and marketing team from Verisign for reaching out to discuss public and domain investor perception of the .TV extension and asking for feedback as they move .TV forward.

In too many ways there is a huge disconnect between the people that control domain names in general and those of us that make a living either by selling them or developing them, or in my case both. Whether you believe in "alternative" extensions such as .TV is not the point here, the point is they were open minded enough to ask my opinion as both a domainer and an end user.

I admit freely that my investment in .TV names is minimal these days but do think it is probably one of the most underutilized branding tools out there. I do see many successful sites using it but not as many as there should be. Recently I had been contemplating a few specific .TV acquisitions for development purposes so this call was very timely and gives me a bit of confidence in making the acquisitions.

They were very open-minded to both critical and positive discussion and my overall impression is they are truly interested in taking it to the next level. The biggest breath of fresh air was really the fact there was no defensiveness when I brought out negative items (premium pricing) and other things I have heard from .TV investors over the years.

Thanks to Samantha Frida, Thomas Correia, and Michaela Barnes for spending the hour or so yesterday talking with me.

dotBIZ dotTV dotUS All Within 5 Miles On Billboards

OK, before I even start this post I want to start with a disclaimer: I do not have domain investments in the .BIZ or .US extensions and only a few .TV names.  Although I am a believer in being able to build a business on alternative extensions as a domain investment, specifically .BIZ has just not been something I have been a fan of but I do think both .US and .TV have solid potential (and am kicking myself for not grabbing .US names).

All that said, while traveling the past couple days I had plenty of  "windshield time" and as with most other domainers I tend to notice the domain names that companies use on billboards, as you would expect the large majority of the domains seen are .COMs with .NET coming in a solid second place then a sprinking of .ORGs. No real surprise there at all (in the future there may be  a .ME somewhere on a highway near you, maybe a state geo site).

Today though I happened to notice something that piqued my curiosity a bit. Within what I would estimate as 5 miles I saw 3 "alternative" extensions on billboards, a .BIZ (a billboard company of all things), a .TV (TV station), and a .US (car dealership, and a VERY successful one at that). As long as I have been domaining I am not sure I have ever witnessed 3 sites in such a short stretch of highway that were all non-dot coms.

As I was typing this I was trying to think of one .BIZ site that I have ever actually seen in use, I could not think of any, then I noticed that the person that invited me to speak this weekend at their regional conference actually uses a .BIZ domain name for her email, that's two in one day, maybe I need to invest:) JUST KIDDING!!!

Have any of the rest of you witnessed a surprising group of non .COMs?