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.

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.

From the article: “Fans will be able to share all the music videos with their friends directly from www.theo2.co.uk and embed them on their social-networking pages and other websites, with playlists automatically updating when new artists’ shows are announced.”