As we know, the Super Bowl is really all about the ads, and this year, .tv made 4 different appearances – 3 were with Flo.tv and one a public service announcement from CBSCares.tv.

Flo.tv is a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm: a multi-billion dollar wireless company that’s brought you the technology behind Verizon’s mobile services and many of the other newer high speed mobile services you’re starting to see in the marketplace. Their package of technology, content and partners allows viewers to see their favorite shows while on the go. One of their tag lines on their site is “Now TV goes where you go”. They had two humorous ads that showed how you’d use their service (one a hen-pecked guy shopping with his girlfriend and one a mini-van full of screaming kids that calm down when presented with Flo.tv’s content). Their third ad tied in cleverly with the half time act. It’s a remake of The Who’s My Generation by Will.i.am played over major news and cultural video clips from over the years. The tag line on this is “Don’t miss a moment”. Perfect for a personalized mobile TV device. And perfect for .tv. Also, if you download the single, the proceeds go to to Haiti Relief.

The CBSCares video is evidently a Super Bowl tradition with .tv. It got a great reaction from the small crowd that I was watching the commercials…oh I mean the game…with. It’s a quiet ad featuring Mark Sanchez, quarterback for the New York Jets, talking about how heart attack symptoms present differently in women than men and encourages women to pay attention.

Watch CBS Videos Online

Interestingly, both Flo and CBS also have .com sites as well as their .tv sites. We here at VeriSign have nicknamed that “double dot”. More about that in a future post; but I think it represents some very interesting opportunities for .tv and is a sign the web and its many uses might be growing up.

And last, I’d like to give a shout out to Bruce Marler, Everything.tv and King.net for also posting about the .tv appearance on the big day.

OK, this post is just for fun. Part of the charm of online video is seeing that silly clip that gets passed around via your friends. Especially for those of you outside of the immediate snow area, here’s one that’s timely for us in the Baltimore/DC area. I went to high school in Erie, PA…where they get real snow, not like here. However, 27 inches,  which is what we got in my neighborhood (with over 38 inches nearby in MD) counts as real snow even in the great white north. Enjoy the video.

P.S. I saw on the news last night that one couple getting married yesterday in the blizzard used www.ustream.tv to have their wedding and broadcast it to all their guest that couldn’t make it due to the snow. Seems not only did they get their guests, but over 800 people signed in to see the couple take their vows. What a great use for streaming video and .tv!

OK, my excuse for not posting these sooner is lame, but true — I’ve been very busy. That said, I didn’t want to miss some great things happening in the .tv and online video world of late.

Muzu.tv Signs Lucrative New Deals –Thanks to www.everything.tv for pointing out this announcement on Muzu.tv. They announced a number of deals to distribute their music videos with AOL, Bebo, and the Telegraph Media Group. among others. The Irish based company says it’s traffic is “growing at 20-30 per cent month on month” and “is serving more than 14 million music related videos in the UK every month.” Music videos are a hot category and go great with .tv

Justin.tv Makes it Easier To Go Live — Last week www.justin.tv rolled out a new version of its broadcasting tools. Cnet is quoting that ” a simple change has led to a 700 percent increase in the number of people who make it from clicking the “broadcast” button on Justin.tv’s front page to actually beginning a live stream.” Those are impressive stats.

Ustream.tv Gets Money to Go East — They announced $20MM in initial funding with an option for $55MM more. That’s real money. What do they plan to do with that? Tech Crunch says “money will be used to expand on the other side of the world, particularly Japan (obvious, given the SoftBank involvement), China, Korea, and India. Mobile video is particularly hot in some of the Asian countries”. At the $75MM mark, the smart money is saying Ustream.tv is worth $230MM.

Vator.tv Splash — This past Thursday Vator.tv launched their event for early stage start ups to pitch their companies to over 300 investors, founders and members of the press. The 10 finalist are listed here. It’s an interesting group with a number of the companies involved in online video. Congratulations to Vator.tv

Online Video to Become Mainstream in 2010 — Speaking of VCs, our friends at Beet.tv interviewed Ross Levinsohn, former digital chief at News Corp and now a venture capitalist at Fuse Capital. Seems his company gets a pretty wide view of whats coming next, looking at over 500 companies a year. When asked what trends he saw, he was bullish on online video — saying it will become mainstream in 2010 — even admitting some already say it is that.

This weekend is the big event for sports fans — Super Bowl XLIV. Last year’s TV audience was the largest ever at 151.6MM total viewers. According to the New England Sports Network this year’s super bowl “will be televised live to more than 180 countries and territories. It will be broadcast live in more than 30 languages, including 13 different languages from Sun Life Stadium”. All fine and good for traditional TV, but what about us online video fans? Well, according to Ryan Lawler of NewTeeVee, we’re out of luck. “This weekend’s big game between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts won’t be streamed live on the Internet.”

CSB will stream the pre-game, and there’s lots of sites where you can view the commercials via online video. According to Nielsen, the commercials are what a bare majority of us prefer anyway “Fifty-one percent of those questioned said they most enjoy the commercials that air throughout the game when compared to the Super Bowl game itself.” And, speaking of super bowl ads, CBS said it sold out it’s commercials as of Monday, with 30 second spots running from $2.5MM to more than $3 million for each; with a total of $200MM spent on Super Bowl ads.

So if you’re in the 51% majority, here’s a fun .tv site that bills itself as the “worlds largest archive of Super Bowl commercials” with 33 years worth of them — www.adland.tv. I may be boring, but my favorite commercial is still Apple’s 1984 ad.

And, speaking of .tv sites and Super Bowl advertising, Gatorade is showing live video via Ustream.tv of athletes testing at a performance lab in Miami in advance of  their Super Bowl marketing efforts. They are hosting pro football players for the rest of the week and inviting people to view the videos. It’s a great example of a major brand integrating video and .tv into their larger social campaign leading up to Super Bowl activity. It’s also a great example of how things you don’t normally associate with video (sports drinks) still work great for online video.

So who do I want to win the game? Well I was born in Baltimore, so I could never root for a team that was stolen in the middle of the night (watch a Barry Levinson movie and you’ll know what I mean). New Orleans has had it rough of late, so I think they deserve it. According to the latest Vegas spread; I’m continuing a tradition of rooting for the underdog.

This video features Chris Sheridan, Vice President of Sales for eNom, Inc. Those of you familiar with the domain industry will recognize Chris, as he has been an active participant in the space for well over ten years. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Chris in one form or another for most of that time (in the interests of full disclosure, Chris and I worked together at both Network Solutions and VeriSign), and I can tell you 3 things about Chris:

1. Chris drinks more red bull than any person on the planet I’ve ever met
2. Chris has a wealth of knowledge and experience regarding domain names, and is consistently on the road attending industry events and conferences – if you see him, be sure to go say “hi”. If you are interested, ask him about the time he was mugged by a kangaroo in Australia.
3. Chris is just as passionate about domain names and .tv as he was on the first day he started at Network Solutions way back in 1998.