Today we’re happy to present a field report from VeriSign’s Patty Fisher, who offers her reaction and opinions after attending Hostingcon 2010.

This week in Austin, TX hundreds of hosted services companies and technology infrastructure leaders gathered for Hostingcon 2010. The event delivers the newest insights and innovation to the hosting community, and this year the hottest topic was the Cloud.

The Cloud is expected to redefine the industry and open up new opportunities for technology and service providers alike.  There was also lots of buzz around value added services and finding the next golden goose. From enterprise to end-consumer the time old questions, of how do you sell more and how do you build loyalty, still remain relevant. It was surprising to see very little on mobile and the impacts of an on-the-go society…maybe next year.

One of our top domain registrars, eNom, featured .tv at the event as an area of opportunity for their hosting resellers. Now more than ever is the right time for the reseller market to embrace .tv, with the fastest growing online audience is people posting and viewing videos online, and .tv is the preferred destination for web video. .tv is here to stay and will only get bigger as right now over 30% of Internet traffic is video, and is projected to be nearly 40% by the end of 2010. So exciting times are ahead for .tv as that number continues to expand.

As the leading children television and new media content producers in Canada, Sinking Ship Productions (www.sinkingship.tv) uses .tv across all their web properties.  According to Blair Powers, Sinking Ship co-founder, having a .tv domain name really establishes and firmly implants in people’s minds that Sinking Ship Entertainment is a television and new media company. Their audience immediately associates the extension with the TV show they know.

When I read this eMarketer article, it really hit a hot button. Just ask my co-workers, this is a mantra for me: online video is breaking out of just the media entertainment space. Yes, we here at Watch.tv love MLB.tv, TNT.tv and Justin.tv … entertainment is great. But, online video is so much more than that. Think of Mercedes-Benz.tv, MarksandSpencer.tv and Adobe.tv all great non-entertainment brands that use online video to engage with their customers and showcase it using .tv.

eMarketer’s Paul Verna points out rightly in his report that video has become a necessity for companies that are looking to truly impact and engage with their customers and audiences. That goes regardless of what industry you’re in. The audience wants and expects their interactions with brands online to include some sort of video component, so it’s time to get on-board with that or risk being left in the dust.

Some interesting stats:

• Mutichannel Merchant asked retailers to identify rich media features that they used, 46% picked video making it the highest ranked category in the survey. Another 42% said they planned to add capability in the next year.
• Forrester says the percentage of the top 50 US Online retailers that offer video on their sites skyrocketed to 68% in 2009 from 18% in 2008.
• The Society for New Communications Research noted 31% of Fortune 500 companies with public-facing blogs used video blogging in 2009, up from 21% in 2008.
• Ad-ology ’s statistics showed “video ahead of mobile marketing and search optimization as budget priorities for US marketing.”

Online video is entertainment. It’s cars. It’s shoes. It’s shirts. It’s engaging with your users, viewers and customers. And, online video is .tv.

A new study from The Diffusion Group (TDG) says lots of us viewers of video are ready to watch on lots of screens. I don’t know about you, but my TV is filled these days with Comcast, oh sorry I mean Xfinity, ads with Shaq watching on a computer, iPad…in a word “TV Everywhere”.

By TDG’s numbers 60%, or 95MM consumers in just the US, are “enthusiastic” about TV Everywhere” services. And, about 34%, or 54MM are willing to pay at least $5 extra a month for the privilege. By my calculations, that’s about $3B a year. Even if that’s lower because of households verses individuals, it’s still a big enough number to get your attention.

Yes, it’s early yet. Michael Greeson, TDG partner and author of the report admits the content isn’t compelling at this stage. But I think it does show the interest users have for video. It’s big and growing.

What do you think? Do you want to watch video anywhere on any device? What would you pay for it?

Every year AlwaysOn, a company that puts on networking and executive events for tech entrepreneurs, puts out its list of the top 250 companies it feels are innovating in any of a number of fields. This year’s list have been published and it’s great to see three .tv sites there: Video advertising management platforms Adap.tv and Freewheel.tv and video discovery site Muzu.tv all got the nod this year.

Three out of 250 might not seem like a lot but the fact that all of these sites are video-based in some way reinforces the feeling we have the .tv is an excellent way to brand a video-centric site. All three of them – and countless others who didn’t make this year’s AlwaysOn list – are doing fantastic things by combining an online video strategy and a domain that immediately says to anyone visiting that this site will have something to do with video.

Kudos to these members of the .tv community for showing how innovative online video and .tv can be.