there are some believers and alot of naysayer concerning the .mobi
I am sitting here watching the snapnames auction and i see
porn.mobi go for 100k+
broadway.mobi 17k
How do these people justify paying these prices for a domain that is popularly believed to be "doomed"
I have to assume that this is what these people do for a living and they must know what they are doing
???
Here are few thoughts going back to the original post quoted above on this thread:
I take issue with the statement that dotMobi is "popularly believed to be doomed" and believe prices people are paying for .mobi Premium Names reflect smart acquisitions by smart people.
Some of the arguments I hear against .mobi and/or the prices people are paying are similar to those I heard years ago against ccTLDs and even .com itself. Popular dissent in the late 90's and early 00's suggested doom for .com and ccTLDs because search engines were surging in popularityâwhen there were only about 15 million domain names in total. "Who needs domain names when a search engine will take you there?" was one argument I vividly recall. "Over time domain names will become irrelevant" was the thought of too many to count. "Who needs ccTLDs when we have .com?" was another theme heard ad nauseam. People thought my partner and I were nuts when we paid $150,000 for business.com in 1997 and started a business registering ccTLDs. And now we're all talking here today.
So my point is this---.mobi is not doomed. It is thriving and supported by an incredibly talented worldwide team and a slew of big-time diverse investors with great resources. It is supported by the developer community. It is supported by many domainers who have a history of incredible success---and we thank the domainer community for that support. It is supported by our good registrar partners around the world. It is also supported more and more by large corporations who must not only invest just $10 or $15 dollars registering a .mobi name, but commit tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to internally vet, find and hire an agency who understands mobile (many donât yet), develop a mobile presence and then promote that presence via a dotMobi name, as many leading organizations in several verticals are now doing.
Also, hard statistics and reliable forecast data indicate moving forward the vast majority of people with access to the Internet around the planet will only have such access via their mobile phone for the foreseable future. They will not have any desktop PC habits to replicate or abandon. There is an entire generation of tens of millions coming at us very fast who will be completely raised on mobile Internet access. dotMobi is perfectly positioned to take advantage of these macro trends.
Thus IMHO the prices people are paying today for names from our Premium Name inventory reflect that the market believes in the mobile Internet and is bullish on dotMobi's approach to improving the mobile browsing experience and eventual traffic that flows from such an improved experience.
And FYI, for anyone who is interesting talking face-to-face about all this and more, I invite you to chime in and tell me what city would be most convenient for you to come to a local dotMobi Happening event. The drinks and chow will be on us and they will be casual and conversational. Plus maybe a surprise or two. Vote for your city or region at
http://www.polldaddy.com/poll.aspx?p=317439 before March 4th. To learn more about the dotMobi Happenings you can visit my personal page at
http://www.pinkybrand.com/eventspeople.html.