.mobi Is it going to be another failure??

[nitika]

I was optimistic about .mobi, as there are some huge companies behind it, but THIS ARTICLE has changed my opinion about .mobi

Should we really invest in .mobi??

Anyway, heres the article??

.mobi — Kickstarting the Mobile Web, Or Holding It Back?

The .mobi mobile-specific domain has been getting some attention this week since its sunrise period for registrations of industry-related companies began yesterday. Its backers contend a mobile-only domain is needed to push the mobile Web forward, but .mobi could end up doing more harm than good.

The Wall Street Journal’s got a typical mainstream press article on .mobi, accepting the marketing hype behind it without question. The party line behind the domain is that it will make mobile surfing easier and better for users — “Dot-mobi makes the Internet work on phones,” says the CEO of the company behind it — but this isn’t as true as they’d have you believe.

First, the domain .mobi itself isn’t particularly friendly for mobile devices, as plenty of people have pointed out. That’s something of a superficial complaint, but a relevant one nonetheless.

A bigger issue is the idea that somehow having a mobile-specific domain will make it easier for people to find what they’re looking for on their mobile device. This isn’t necessarily true — it just shifts the question from “is it mobile.x.com, or x.com/mobile, or wap.x.com?” to “do they have a .mobi site?” And that’s assuming that somebody is going to back up .mobi with a massive marketing and education campaign to make the general public aware of its existence.

Also, one of the stipulations of the domain is that registrants’ sites will follow certain rules, or they’ll be shut down. My first objection to this is that domain registrars shouldn’t be in the business of dictating content, as it sets a very dangerous precedent, but that’s an ideological argument for another time. One of these rules is that .mobi sites must serve an entry page coded in XHTML-MP, unless the site detects a user agent that calls for a different flavor of markup. One point is that if a content provider’s audience has a need for one type of markup — say, WAP — that’s what they should be able to use, user-agent sniffing or no. But you can’t help but feel that this implicit preference for XHTML-MP has some other motives when you read a quote from a Nokia spokesperson saying “People have to have new reasons to buy new phones. That’s what we hope to happen here,” about .mobi.

So if we’re going to fall back on user-agent sniffing, why bother with .mobi at all? We’d be better off encouraging sites to simply sniff the device with which users are browsing, then serving them relevant content — and all from existing, familiar addresses. Of course, smart companies and content providers are already doing this, without spending the extra money and resources on a .mobi site. I’m hard-pressed to think of an example where having a mobile-only site on a mobile-specific domain is preferable to sniffing user agents.

Here’s where the potential downside of .mobi comes in. The biggest risk is that site owners will buy a .mobi domain, throw up an XHTML-MP site, and leave it at that, thinking they’ve got this mobile thing sorted out — after all, they’ve got a site using .mobi, that thing that’s supposed to make the mobile Web happen. But that strategy is really no better than putting up a WAP site a hard-to-find address. They’re both strategies that are more exclusionary than exclusive, leaving the hard work up to the end user, when it could better be done on the side of the site.

The bottom line for mobile Web surfing is that all users need to be delivered the information they want, regardless of their device or browser, or what address a content provider decides to use. Best case scenario, this means a mobile user goes to X.com, and gets served up a page formatted for their device. If that technology isn’t in place, they should get the standard HTML page, and their browser should be able to handle it. Adding another address possibility that users have to try really doesn’t do anything to help. .mobi has highlighted some best practices for the mobile Web, and site owners should take these into consideration. But they can (and should) be implemented separately from a .mobi address. Why introduce more confusion for users and pass it off as making things better for them?

(As an aside, if .mobi expects people to take their message of enhancing mobile usability and improving the experience of mobile Web users, they should start by improving their desktop site, which is laden with annoying and unnecessary PDFs and Word documents, and links opening in new browser windows.)

[cloudfuyun]

would never invest in .mobi
reg fee is too expensive, that simple

[katherine]

It's all about hype.
Sure the landrush is coming, some domainers will invest in the ext and the registration figures will jump at the beginning but that's it. It will remain an odd TLD just like .coop or .aero, that is a vanity TLD with an unlikely raison d'être.
I would not advise anyone to invest in that TLD. Unless you really intend to use your names. My guess is, most would rest on your hands. But I can imagine that after landrush we will witness a few sales of ultra-premium keywords for $$$$. It's no different for .biz for example. Strong keywords fetch nice sums but the truth is, most .biz names are useless or just do not fit.

However I found one interesting quote in the article:

But you can’t help but feel that this implicit preference for XHTML-MP has some other motives when you read a quote from a Nokia spokesperson saying “People have to have new reasons to buy new phones. That’s what we hope to happen here,” about .mobi.

In light of this the whole .mobi TLD story should be viewed as an investment ploy more than a publicity stunt :biggrin1:

[Source]

Is it going to be a failure?

Magic 8-ball says, "You can count on it."

[Ehsan]

Well surkey its going to be another faliure as ppl got no timt o tye a website name and that long extension to open a webnsite on mobile thay rather make a site on .uk or some other or .tk and make it avilanle on mobile and .com is alo as good for mobile i will prefrer.com on .mobi

[Fredo]

I have to say that the 2 years minimum of registration and the high price won't help individuals to buy the .mobi names. We will have to see if the major companies adopt and advertise the .mobi. I don't see them advertising the .eu at the moment so I am wondering if only the .com and the country extensions have value... we will see...

[SigRent.com]

I think they will be a great extension in the future and will have a large market if not more then .com as everyone will be using phones to access the internet in the near future. Especially if we see .mobi buttons added to mobile phone devices.

[labrocca]

I don't yet have 1 .mobi domain. It doesn't enthuse me.

[whitebark]

The author of that piece has been reading my replies - you don't need .mobi to surf today's websites. Companies that have seen the demand for mobile ready content are already for the most part issuing that content currently using technology already in place via their existing .tlds.

Browser sniffers as the article points out are such an easy inclusion into any website for any website owner worried/concerned/looking to ensure their viewers get the most closely matched markup for their device.

[Irish31]

I must agree, it appears right now to be worthless. For everyone saying the worst they will do is break even, and sell back the domains if they dont' want them, well who is going to buy them if everyone has the brilliant idea you do?


If it takes off you wouldn't want to sell them in a bulk flush out anyways. I hope it does well but from what I know of the situation, I really don't think it will. Not every TLD is going to blow up the market.


Jay

[Adam Dicker]

I will jump in and say I won't be buying any .mobi

-=DCG=-

[wangjinhk]

I don't think so,IMO .mobi domain have cretain value.

[GoPC]

I don't think it has as much to do with the end users, the sufers, as it does with the Cell Phone manufacturers.

IF the general idea is to just assume that cell-based surfers will naturally gravitate toward .mobi sites... then I would have to agree with the naysayers.

However, as I said, IF the extension is backed by cell service providers and cell manufacturers... folks that are put in a position to create mobi defaults, design onboard software that grants mobi priority, creates mobi shortcut hotkeys and softkeys... THEN mobi will be a success because it will be literally programmed into the user base

Hmm.... if only some of these guys were involved though. People like Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson, Vodofone, T-Mobile, Telfonica.

Oh... they ARE.

Don't forget the inhernat power and success of force feeding your market place.

GoPC

[Creature]

Hmm.... if only some of these guys were involved though. People like Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson, Vodofone, T-Mobile, Telfonica.

Oh... they ARE.

Don't forget the inhernat power and success of force feeding your market place.

GoPC

In the UK high street today the Vodafone store did not know what a dot mobi domain was or which phone could be used with them. I also tried The Link and Phones4U. Same blank responses.

You can't expect companies to spend the time to duplicate content on a mobi site. The answer has to be in the design of the web site.

Just as web sites are now made to work on multiple browsers, in the future a clever bloke will write a script so that one day they also run on small screen devices, picking out the relevant content. Such a design script probably already exists.

Therefore I am really starting to wonder if .mobi is just a huge scam. I have 10 names just incase.

[fatter]

Between the loss of income to online gambling domains(less money to reinvest) and all the money spent on mobis there wont be as much domain buying cash available how will these 2 things effect our industry at large. I didnt reg any mostly because of the high reg fee, or i would have picked up a couple, i remmember when i fist started out reg fees on dotcoms were 79 dollars for 2 year reg, and it didnt take long to spend 5k

[fatter]

In the UK high street today the Vodafone store did not know what a dot mobi domain was or which phone could be used with them. I also tried The Link and Phones4U. Same blank responses.

You can't expect companies to spend the time to duplicate content on a mobi site. The answer has to be in the design of the web site.

Just as web sites are now made to work on multiple browsers, in the future a clever bloke will write a script so that one day they also run on small screen devices, picking out the relevant content. Such a design script probably already exists.

Therefore I am really starting to wonder if .mobi is just a huge scam. I have 10 names just incase.

I dont think it is a huge scam, but i also beleive these other devices will start taking business from cell phone companies as they double as cells with much less in monthly service charges

[tekz999]

Sell me your nnn.mobis if anyone have, pm me.

[katherine]

In the UK high street today the Vodafone store did not know what a dot mobi domain was or which phone could be used with them. I also tried The Link and Phones4U. Same blank responses.

Funny

You can't expect companies to spend the time to duplicate content on a mobi site. The answer has to be in the design of the web site.

Obviously. Today with style sheets and table-less design it's not a problem to render a site on different browsers with different screen sizes. Including mobile browsers.
Not to mention that there is no single mobile browsing standard. The handsets on the market do not have the same screen size so what's the point with .mobi ? What's the need for specific markup ? I can see none.

Therefore I am really starting to wonder if .mobi is just a huge scam. I have 10 names just incase.

'Scam' would be harsh but we are quite close. IMO it's the worst TLD introduced ever, what's particular with .mobi is that is goes counter the established principle of device-independence on the web but I'm not going to repeat myself.
The web standards are already there. Just because you put some specific TLD does not mean we will have plenty of relevant contents for mobile devices. The problem has been there for years: lack of content. That's one of the reasons for the failure of WAP a few years earlier (remember ?).
All in one I think it is money flushed down the toilet, I just hope nobody here will run into debt because of dubious registrations

[hugegrowth]

It will be funny if in a year from now the .mobi extension has taken off, and we look back at a lot of the negativity towards it here. It's like seasoned stock pickers or market analysts trying to predict market movements, or weather reports that end up being different. The thing that will make .mobi work is if the big mobile companies and mobile content providers start using and advertising .mobi sites. If they can ingrain the extension into the public mindset then it will work well. It won't matter if a .com or .net can also be used for mobile, or whatever, if the public buys into it then its a done deal. All the other 'new' extensions, like .biz, .info, .name, .cc never had the backing that it looks like .mobi will. I've even started seeing .mobi ads in magazines. The only reason that .com is king is because it was used first and advertised widely, not because they are great letters. If .net had been first then it would be the best. Country code domains are growing in popularity because governments and businesses are using them to identify themselves with the country. They could also be using .com and .net but don't. If the mobile service and content industries start promoting and using .mobi heavily, it will work well as an extension. As a side note I only own 2 .mobi

[mjnels]

well said hugegrowth