.MOBI crashes Sedo... WOW!

[katherine]

I fully agree with Acroplex. And I wonder why some of the most enthusiastic .mobi backers are bashing at .asia at the same time. To me the case for .mobi is no more convincing than .asia for instance.
Now one thing I will readily admit is that the .mobi sales have been impressive. I would have expected that the market would eventually cool down and that we would see more reasonable prices.
IMO the current auctions have bids that are waaaaaaayyyy too high. Whoever is bidding $$$,$$$ is taking a huge gamble with their money (I say: financial suicide).
Nonetheless the fact remains that the ext is thriving purely on marketing hype. No doubt it will remain the most overhyped TLD in history.
I still have zero confidence in the future for that TLD.
To me it is an investment that can only lose value rapidly by quickly becoming obsolete and irrelevant (as it had ever been...).

[hugegrowth]

Second, as I already stated in that other thread, with each new TLD the game becomes a repetition:

1. Announce new TLD
2. Reserve hot-selling keywords
3. Open the floodgates
4. Wait a while to create hype
5. Auction the reserved keywords

Which other new extensions have done this and had similar sales figures to .mobi?

Does anyone really think if .asia does the same kind of rollout it will have the same results? You can't even bid on .asia unless you live/do business there.

[Acro]

I'd like to get my hands on Asia Carrera's assets

[NameYourself]

Some of the auction results are extremely high:

Music.mobi - $616,000
Games.mobi - $401,500

Is this all just hype, or do the 19 bidders in games.mobi know something that everyone else doesn't?

[Focus]

.mobi is a good place for these big companies mentioned to spend big advertising budgets and waste money..I still do not understand how people equate others spending stupid amounts of money on .mobi domains with their success or legitimacy as an accepted or commonplace extension like .com...the only people really succeeding here are the guys that run the registry and the resellers who are flipping them...everyone in the world is still going to type in .com for a very very long time to come. They can advertise .mobi all they want and spend LOTS of money doing so, and the domain and ext's success will only be based on such, so just because they see a bank of america commercial to type-in bofa.mobi does'nt mean they are going to goto everything .mobi from there on out, and most likely they are going to be really confused with all the "extension dilution"..and in my personal opinion .mobi is a big distraction from the .com market and big time waste of money for investors looking for long term growth, but hey..they have to spend it somewhere! So, I hope everyone selling their keyword .mobi's now make alot of money while they still can and all the hype is alive...because that's all this ext. is about..a cash cow for the registry and resellers..which is great I guess..but .mobi is still an ugly little stepchild.

[Jagusa]

We'll have to see what becomes of these new domains with respect to sites. However, this looks big for .mobi.

I think domaining just got rocked -- with .mobi taking an unexpected (and some would argue unfair) jump past many other extensions. The top 25 highest price sales this year are shaping to be 22 .coms, 1 .de, and 2 .mobis.

That's big. Time to make sure my business plan can handle it.

[Focus]

Ohh..and let's see how many of the auctions actually get paid for

[Keynes]

Lets analyze the facts surrounding dotMobi...

1) This is an irrelevant comparison - the velocity of Internet advertising and domain investment has vastly changed over this timespan. Moreover, extensions always perform best during their first couple years, driven more by marketing (ahem) than fundamentals.

2) This is as valid as referencing real estate prices in 2006 or equity prices in 1999 to justify valuations.

3) Anyone with the right budget can hire any given agency.

4) Take a look at the models for iPhone and Google's Android - they're optimized to show actual websites on their browsers.

5) see #2

[katherine]

...
Question: Which posh Madison Avenue Ad agencies are advancing the .info, .biz, .net,.us, .org, etc. namespaces? NONE. NOBODY.
...
Question: Who is meeting with CEOs lobbying for the .info, .org, .us, etc. extensions to use within their respective company branding? NONE. NOBODY

Thanks for pointing out the difference.
These extensions have a genuine raison d'être and are naturally accepted without all the pump and dump and the overhype.
The same cannot be said about .mobi of course.

...
4.) Which Fortune 1000 companies built & market .mobi sites for their Mobile Web initiatives?:

And 99% are using .com as well
Didn't they have a WAP subdomain 5 years ago ? They can still scrap their nice .mobi sites in a year or two when the fad is over.

...the only people really succeeding here are the guys that run the registry and the resellers who are flipping them.....

That's the bottom line

[PapaStiz]

We'll have to see what becomes of these new domains with respect to sites. However, this looks big for .mobi.

I think domaining just got rocked -- with .mobi taking an unexpected (and some would argue unfair) jump past many other extensions. The top 25 highest price sales this year are shaping to be 22 .coms, 1 .de, and 2 .mobis.

I think the difference here is that these names were held, on purpose, to create hype.

.com/.net names don't need to be held in order to generate buzz, they do it themselves.

Only after there are sales of .mobi repeatedly will we know for sure or not if the domain industry has been rocked, or just received a fading blip on the radar. .com's and .net's set records all the time, will .mobi continue to set records or is it a one time thing?

If we are seeing sales such as this in .mobi a year from now, then we will know if .mobi has succeeded, or have gone the way of .nu

[jasdon11]

If we are seeing sales such as this in .mobi a year from now, then we will know if .mobi has succeeded, or have gone the way of .nu

That's what people were saying 12 months ago.....

[xero]

...
In other words, it is about consumer choice ....

So it makes a lot of sense to have the choice between ESPN.com and ESPN.mobi

ESPN.com is still available to all - including those mobile users (presumably with time to kill) who really *do* want to read about Brett Favre's favorite pregame meal, learn about the childhood memories of Randy Moss or see video of Shaq's south Beach mansion.
But ESPN.mobi provides a slick, efficient, well-crafted set of just scores and headlines relevant to the user's very specific mobile usage context.

-Michael

This is it exactly.
If your device can access both, it's good to have the choice between a fast clean mobile site, or the regular .com site.
Many people will find it pretty annoying to get automatically redirected.

[Devil Dog]

That's what people were saying 12 months ago.....

But, but, were those names in the current auction available last year?

[TurNIC.com]

espn.mobi - http://mobileapp.espn.go.com/wireles...redesign/index

Do you need a .mobi? Use mobileapp.example.com?!

[acronym007]

H to the PYE

This the worst case of hyping anything up I have ever seen. Just because people dump money on it doesn't mean it's valuable or worth the money pumped into to. Big companies spend billions of dollars on ads I never even understand. Who ever is bidding on these names has money, people with money can take risks and lose money. I am not in that category. Anyone that is hyping mobi should try to sell a .mobi in here and listen to the crickets chirping. There isn't enough transparency in our industry. sedo conceals these bidders, my money is on the fact that each one of these bidders will only gain more from the hype, will you, can you afford to live off hype?

[Keynes]

That's what people were saying 12 months ago.....

12 months ago people were saying .com is king; it still is. I have some really pretty tulips for sale if anyone is interested...

[jasdon11]

12 months ago people were saying .com is king; it still is.

No-ones saying it isn't.

[Devil Dog]

were those names in the current auction available last year?

?

No-ones saying it isn't.

[Focus]

I'm putting ALL my money on .com

[Jagusa]

I think the difference here is that these names were held, on purpose, to create hype.

Okay...? These .mobi guys made lots of money.

.com/.net names don't need to be held in order to generate buzz, they do it themselves.

Okay...? That's fine... I agree, .com is really great... .net is pretty good too. Nevertheless, these .mobi guys made lots of money -- money that smelled a lot like dot com. They did it by domaining -- what we do. Are you saying that .mobi did a bad job making money, or something else?

Only after there are sales of .mobi repeatedly will we know for sure or not if the domain industry has been rocked, or just received a fading blip on the radar. .com's and .net's set records all the time, will .mobi continue to set records or is it a one time thing?

If we are seeing sales such as this in .mobi a year from now, then we will know if .mobi has succeeded, or have gone the way of .nu

Okay? .Mobi might not be a big deal next year, but today, these .mobi guys made lots of money. They didn't make it next year. They made it right now. You might view it as a sustainability or ecosystem problem, but now these guys can afford to do a lot more infrastructure, ecosystem planning, or just plain buzzmaking.

That's a big deal.


PS- This is not meant to be incidenary or a flame of your post (and I am not a gigantic .mobi supporter), however, I do think the .mobi model is something to watch --- we have lots of similar tlds coming down the line. I'm trying to figure out how to prepare and evolve for this proliferation of tlds.