Have a .TV Domain Name? You Can Join me.tv

Demand Media rolled out me.tv today, a new social network around person video sites. You have to have a .tv domain name to create a site on the network, which costs $25/year.

Once you’ve registered a .tv domain name, me.tv provides you with a number of templates to choose from. You can also create an introductory video (via a partnership with VideoEgg), add blog posts, videos from other sites and information about yourself. Me.tv will also be adding advertising optionally to the sites and sharing revenue with the domain owner.

There are a number of example sites up already. See Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt’s me.tv page at Richard.tv (Rosenblatt was the CEO of MySpace just prior to its acquisition by Fox). Carson Daly (MTV, NBC) also has a me.tv site up at CarsonDaly.tv (also pictured below).

Demand’s business goal is to sell more .tv domain names through their domain registrar subsidiary, eNom (and eNom’s many resellers), and to generate revenue from these domains once they are live. From that standpoint this is a good move. It’s less clear that this will become a compelling social network, though, because there is a massive amount of competition. For example, Ning’s new tools for creating social networks on the fly, including video networks, are very good, don’t require users to pay $25/year and they also have advertising with a revenue share. And there are countless other services that let users create their own video channels.

Rosenblatt is a saavy guy, though, and he’s courting the hollywood crowd, not the tech elite. Rumor is that a number of celebrities will be creating me.tv sites in the coming weeks. If A-list celebrities flock to the platform based on Rosenblatt’s connections, perhaps it will get traction.

My guess is that me.tv will eventually launch a free version of the service to get more users on the platform.