12 years ago this past Friday was one of the moments in my domaining career that changed things for me. I had registered domains starting back in 1997 but it was November 2005, when I started the .tv forum on Namepros.
Today there are tons of niches and people who focus on a narrow category of domains, but back in 2005 there was no such activity on the forums, and there was little to no blog activity.
The .tv sub forum was born out of one single thread that just got too big. I remember talking to RJ about it and really expecting him to pass. But he supported the idea and the forum really took off, one of the few examples where someone could say, this is thee definitive resource for an extension or a topic in domaining.
A genuine community was born, at one point it almost got scary, cultish like, people who I never knew would call me at midnight and be like, “Hi I am so and so, my member name on Namepros is X, can we talk?”
It was an interesting time because .tv got little love for the most part, and now here were a group of people that got to know one another, their family situations, their likes and dislikes, because of this one topic.
People helped one another in a way I have not seen in domaining since. I had people who sent me gifts, thanked me for them becoming a domainer, their introduction to domaining was not Rick Schwartz, it was not .com. It was the extension of this tiny island nation.
People who had no .com portfolios or bad one’s, became successful with an extension that was confusing, not well understood outside of our community.
The new gtlds learned how to do premium pricing from .TV, a post I wrote about the history of .tv has been included in books. I made more money in the extension and watched friends sell hundreds of thousands of dollars, guys like John Van Den Berg,(JohnTV) Jean Francois Arrou Vignod, (Argos) Lance Block, George Pickering, Jeff Overman, Jim Holleran and Ammar (Ammudamus) from Legacy Fund have all done extremely well. Along with another 100 core members the sub forum was a special place.
I wrote a blog at Everything.tv and another forum sprung up at Allthings.tv. Those things are gone now as I started broadening out my domain writing and research. Allthings.tv had their owners move on to other things as well.
Namepros kinda does things differently now and .tv is mixed in with all the other cctlds now. There is not as much conversation and it’s just a sign to me how differently I thought about domaining 10 – 12 years ago as I do today. I don’t own many .tv names and the extension owes me nothing, I would like to think that I helped it as well along with the support of 100 + loyalists who helped to define what was a special place for over a decade.
Happy anniversary .TV sub forum without it a lot of people I know would have had a much different domaining experience.
Thanks for all your efforts in .TV Ray, was the one bright spot in an industry full of .commers. It helped me explore alt tlds (alt coins of yore?) and use them for development, which was eventually more effective than brandable .coms, which is all we could afford then.
While the .tv forum might be no more, I doubt anyone will forget your contribution to the extension, I’m surprised .TV has missed the opportunity to appoint you as a brand ambassador.
Dude you are one of the greatest people I have met in this biz. My wife and I would have a lot less $ in the bank if it was not for you and that forum. all the best.
Whoa! Cool backstory. I used to browse namepros back when that forum had more prominance and it definitely seemed to be its own ecosystem.
Btw – Jeremy.tv just dropped if anyone wants it!
(i had to pay a $350 registry premium for my first name .tv ugh!)
Much better times back then, I liked a lot more people in the industry then. There are so many I despise like Cultra that I just stopped reading domaining.com and bookmarked a few blogs.
Namepros and dnforum seem kinda boring now.
Hello Ray,
I want to thank you for everything! I am not as active as I used to be, having kids will do that, but .tv forum at Namepros will and is always a special place in my heart, and your deserve all the credit. I remember when I bought my 1st
.tv name in July 2000, I was thinking is there anybody else out there or am I all alone, but when I found Namepros .tv section years later, I found instant friends, buddies who share the same vision. Again, thanks for all you done, your one of the great guys in the industry and keep up the great work!
A great extension. Probably better than most gTLDs – if not all.
Thank you Ray, Ammar, Jim and all for being so open and giving your time and great efforts, as you have done. Wishing all good things for you and yours.
I learned so much from that Dot TV Forum.
Thanks Ray for creating it and thanks to everyone who contributed over there. Each name you wrote in that post up there helped me out personally at one time or another and it really was an awesome community. Thanks to all members there. It was one of the best tools I’ve ever had as a domainer.
I am so surprised they shut it down. I really wish they would bring it back one day. I would like others entering domaining to be feel and be part of what I felt over there.