Ex-MySpace chairman, Verisign to promote .tv sites
By Kenneth Li
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The former chairman of MySpace.com is throwing his weight behind the ".tv" domain category, betting that it will gain popularity as more users watch, create and post videos online.
Richard Rosenblatt's Demand Media will unveil on Wednesday a deal with Internet security and dot-com registry VeriSign Inc. (VRSN.O) to begin marketing .tv as a preferred Web site domain for online videos, in the same way .org is used for non-profit groups.
Users can begin registering domain names from Demand at ChannelMe.tv on Wednesday.
Rosenblatt's broader plan begins next March, when Demand will provide users with Web software to upload and share homemade videos, grab professional content from licensed sources and blog -- potentially creating their own mini MySpaces.
"Video is becoming more personal," Rosenblatt, chairman and chief executive of Demand, said in an interview. "It's less about the big amorphous Web sites and more about people creating their own channel."
The explosion of video-sharing sites like YouTube, which Google Inc. (GOOG.O) purchased for $1.65 billion in November, highlight a growing interest in creating and viewing video on the Web.
Santa Monica, California-based Demand hopes users with .tv addresses will link them to pages they have already created on sites like MySpace or YouTube in order to simplify Web addresses that are otherwise hard to remember.
To date, .tv attracts mostly vanity Web sites and the odd Hollywood media site.
It has nowhere near the popularity of ".com," which is attached to nearly 60 million domains, according to VeriSign, the biggest company acting as a middleman for setting up such domains.
Rosenblatt is best known for brokering the sale of Intermix, which owned the popular social network Web site MySpace, to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. NWSa.N last year for about $580 million.
In November, MySpace and other Fox Interactive Media Web sites collectively surpassed sites owned by Internet media leader Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O) by U.S. page views, according to comScore Networks, an Internet measurement firm.
Fox sites had 39.5 billion page views, compared to Yahoo sites' 38 billion views, according to a UBS report on the comScore data.
Rosenblatt launched Demand Media in May, backed by about $220 million in funding from venture capital firms 3i Group Plc (III.L) and Oak Investment Partners. Spectrum Equity is also an investor.
His company has been snapping up small Web companies since May, including Hillclimb Media, which hosts travel, sports and outdoors sites, and Web site registrar eNom.
Demand aims to profit from buying up what is little more than unknown billboards sites on the Web and relaunching sites lie Grab.com, CasesLadder.com and flashgames.com with social networking and video capabilities that serve niche interests.
