With a brand that’s always been synonymous with “video” as MTV it makes a lot of sense that MTV would use a .tv site for their MTV Europe site. They know that visitors hitting a .tv site are expecting video and don’t disappoint, with plenty of streaming content on the front page to check out. You can read more about MTV.tv in our .tv Showcase and download a full case study on how the brand has used a .tv domain and found it to be successful, simple and intuitive for people in need of their MTV Europe. As we’ve seen this month, MTV is just one example of .tv being perfect for branding video content both in the North America and internationally.

Today’s guest blogger joins us from Switzerland. Vincenzo Russo is a Development Manager for VeriSign in our Fribourg office. As many of you may know, Switzerland has multiple official languages. Vincenzo’s post is in both English and Italian and highlights some of the .tv sites in his part of the world. It’s a great example of how international .tv is; it works with many languages!

Se avete recentemente soggiornato in Svizzera, vi sarete spesso imbattuti nella molteplicità delle offerte televisive della nazione elvetica.

La Svizzera, pur con un numero di abitanti relativamente ridotto (appena otto milioni), vanta il ragguardevole primato di avere quattro lingue ufficiali: l’Italiano, il Francese, il Tedesco e il Romancio – quest’ultimo per la verità parlato solo da una stretta minoranza.

Una tale diversità linguistica si concretizza anche a livello di comunicazione nell’opportunità di un’offerta televisiva quanto mai variegata e disponibile su tutto il territorio nazionale.

E proprio in questo settore si fa vedere l’importanza del dominio .TV

La televisione Svizzera tedesca, per esempio, ha recentemente adottato il dominio www.sf.tv

Bene, vi starete chiedendo perché’ mai abbandonare il tanto dominio .ch, particolarmente caro agli Svizzeri.

La risposta e’ in almeno due motivi: il primo e’ che il dominio .tv garantisce alla “Schweizer Fernsehen” una presenza internazionale e una forte trazione a livello di marketing, che va oltre i confini elvetici.

Ma c’e’ anche una ragione più propriamente tecnica: in Svizzera il dominio .ch stabilisce che tutti i nomi di secondo livello debbano essere formati da almeno tre lettere.

A questa regola fanno eccezione solo i nomi dei cantoni: per esempio www.ge.ch per il Cantone Ginevra o www.vd.ch per il Canton Vaud.

Quindi sarebbe impossibile per le televisioni svizzere avere un dominio .ch con solo due lettere, sicuramente più’ facile da ricordare e quindi essere visitato da parte degli internauti elvetici.

L’offerta del sito della Schweizer Fernsehen e’ molto interessante: video podcast, un videoportal che permette di navigare in 3D le trasmissioni del giorno, una sezione interattiva con gadget da scaricare e aggiornamenti automatici per il proprio media center e una versione mobile che può’ essere usufruita da smartphone di ultima generazione.

Continua perciò il successo del dominio .tv per le televisioni in Svizzera e molte altre televisioni si garantiranno presto una formidabile visibilita’ grazie a un dominio .TV

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The success of the .TV domain for Swiss television

If you have recently stayed in Switzerland, you would have often run into the broad offer of the Swiss national television. Switzerland, although with a relatively small population (just eight million), has the remarkable record of having four official languages: Italian, French, German and Romansh – the latter actually spoken only by a small minority.

Such diversity in the languages is present also in the television system and gives the opportunity to offer multilingual channels throughout the country.

In this arena the .TV domain plays an important role.

Swiss German television, for example, has recently adopted the domain www.sf.tv

Well, you’re wondering why to give up the .ch domain, largely used by Swiss companies. There are at least two reasons: first, the. TV extension provides the “Schweizer Fernsehen” with an international presence and strong traction at marketing level, that goes beyond the Swiss borders.

But there is also a more technical reason: the domain .ch in Switzerland states that all the second level names should be formed by at least three letters.
An exception to this rule applies only to the names of the cantons such as Geneva (www.ge.ch) or Vaud (www.vd.ch).

So it would be impossible for televisions to have a .ch Swiss domain with only two letters, certainly easier to remember and then to be visited by Internet users in Switzerland.

The offer of the site and the Schweizer Fernsehen is very interesting, with video podcast, an interactive videoportal, allowing you to navigate in 3D the broadcasts of the day, and a section with gadgets to download, automatic updates for your media center and a mobile version for 3G smartphones.

In line with the success of those channels, more and more Swiss TV stations may register a .TV domain (the word “TV” has the same meaning in Italian, French or German), since it is easier to remember and gives them excellent visibility.

Amber MacArthur is a TV host for several online .tv sites including www.webnation.tv, www.commandn.tv, and www.twit.tv/natn. She chose .tv because she says it represents a community of multimedia content producers and equalizes the playing field because it is available to anyone focused on making a name for themselves in the broadcast world.  Amber says “When I see that someone has a .TV domain name, it really says to me that they’re serious about video production online.” Find out more.

Our guest blogger today is Manish Dalal, Vice-President of VeriSign APAC Naming Services based in Bangalore, India. He has been in the telecom and internet industry for the past 18 years and studies consumer internet trends closely.

India is a natural market for .tv given the immense popularity of television entertainment and movies in the country. India already has over 110 million pay TV subscribers across cable and satellite TV, and that is slated to grow to 150 million by 2014. The country also has hundreds of national and regional TV channels. Web sites like nautanki.tv have positioned themselves as the TV content destination on the web where Indian content producers and TV channels can upload their content for user viewing. Nautanki also provides users with personalization features (my profile, my channels, etc.) through their iNautanki service.

In comparison to television, the Indian movie industry is much much bigger with over 2 billion people watching Indian movies worldwide. The Indian movie industry (popularly called Bollywood, although that only includes the Hindi movies and not the other regional language movies) is currently estimated at $2.2 billion and produces five times the number of movies that Hollywood does. It is no wonder that sites like bollywood.tv are a big draw for Indian entertainment-hungry fans globally. Not only does the site provide breaking news from Bollywood, it also allows users to search for movies and movie songs, watch movie trailers, listen to bollywood radio, and watch a few free movies as well.

The continued popularity of Indian entertainment coupled with the fast-growing broadband and mobile industry in India provides an interesting opportunity for rich media .tv web sites in terms of consumer usage and engagement.

SlipStream is a UK based social media platform (hosted via a .tv domain) that integrates broadcast television, radio, on-demand services, personal content and program metadata with social networks to create personalized, social and shareable viewing experiences.  According to The Guardian it acts like a personalized aggregation tool for online media content, pulling in not just BBC TV and radio but your favorite content from YouTube, 4oD and the rest of the web. Here’s the kicker, they offer a  slick lime green and black interface, styled like the iPlayer with that very accessible BBC-esque usability. There’s also a similar version for both the iPhone and a customized NetGem set-top box offering a simplified form that includes “my favourites” or “recommended to me”.  We’re excited to see .tv being used globally and appreciate when companies, such as SlipStream leverage it to showcase their video platforms.