Is The .mobi Madness Finally Over?
from the that-would-be-nice dept
From back when it was first suggested six or so years ago, we were quite skeptical of the need for a "mobile only" top level domain called .mobi. It wasn't difficult to predict that devices would get better and wireless data services would get better, such that there would be no need for a special separate mobile web -- as everything could easily be delivered via the "regular" web. If anything, like many new TLDs, the whole thing just seemed like a cash grab, because companies would feel obligated to pay up to reserve their .mobi domain names before someone else did. And while .mobi tried to position its offering as something much more than a splinter scaled-down internet, most people pretty quickly realized that it served no reasonable purpose. To be honest, I hadn't even heard much at all about .mobi in a couple years, and as more and more people moved onto phones that could handle full webpages -- or, companies set up their own regular websites to automatically scale down for mobile browsers -- the whole concept seemed to have faded away. MobHappy reports that .mobi has been sold off to the company that also owns the rights to the .info domain -- so both can now live together in uselessness. But, best of all, as Carlo explains:And in case you were wondering, my favorite .mobi site, flowers.mobi -- you remember, the one that was purchased for $200,000 in 2006 and was supposed to be developed into a legit site with "relevant content" -- is still just a parked domain with ads. And it's still not compliant with .mobi's rules for its sites. Big surprise there.
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Filed Under: .mobi, domain names, mobile, mobile data, tlds, top level domains
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Guess it's easier to have smarter people read these things for you, and you get them to do it at the meager cost of looking stupid.
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Re:
>>things for you, and you get them to do it at the
>>meager cost of looking stupid.
Yes, and thanks for clearing that up. I was almost certain that he was an actor that played the youngest son in the hit TV series "Mike's Three Trolls".
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dotMobi
"MobHappy reports that .mobi has been sold off to the company that also owns the rights to the .info domain -- so both can now live together in uselessness."
You missed the fact that they also help manage .org (another useless extension?)... but of course you did, as you are only using info that helps with your 'cause' to smear .mobi.
"Afilias’ technology ensures that your service works 100% of the time. Afilias powers key pieces of the Internet’s infrastructure, including resolution of all .info and .org domains."
Not forgetting:
.IN (India), .ME (Montenegro), .AG (Antigua and Barbuda), .BZ (Belize), .GI (Gibraltar), .HN (Honduras), .SC (the Seychelles), .VC (St. Vincent and the Grenadines), and also provides ancillary support to other domains, including .SG (Singapore)
So yeah, going by what you've said, i.e. only mentioning the bad things as you see them in order to smear .mobi, then yes .mobi is doomed to hell.
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Re: dotMobi
Can we get three guesses who you work for?
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The point was that only the negative has been noted.
Anonymous Coward
"I read mobi's on my Kindle. That's what we're talking about right?"
One minute you don't have a clue what .mobi is, next minute you're an expert in the "failure" of domain extensions.
Get a life! LOLZ
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What a joke. You're as useless as .mobi.
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It was a money grab and thats all it ever was.
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You're as useless as .mobi
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Mobi
Lets pray brothers.
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So what are you saying, Afilias is not a well respected company? A company that is in charge of millions of domain names! To be exact 5,734,796 .info domains & 8,071,956 .org domains.
No, I do not work for Afilias.
Ahem brother! =)
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No. Reading comprehension time. I said that the domains were useless. Not the company.
You have said nothing to explain how the domains are useful.
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So What Are The Usful .Mobi Sites
Really I would like to know.
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Re: So What Are The Usful .Mobi Sites
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Sure it might have needed a few tweaks about how root servers divied up the alphabet but there was never a compelling need for tlds - they're a complete accident of history and design.
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well......
It is all confusing for users, designers and developers. But as for mobile carriers and makers, they just don't care. They simply continue to push new devices and software to wipe out the competitor.
.mobi was created to make a medium/standard for everyone to go by. Some may say .mobi is a waste while others say that it would benefit everyone. "some like it shaken while others like it stirred". Not everyone will agree and at this point of time, .mobi owners and .mobi haters tend to push their opinion on each other.
As to this article, "Is The .mobi Madness Finally Over?", it is not clear to what "madness" it is referring. Is it referring to the hype or the fight that followed after the launch? To some, they simply didnt want to waste anymore time arguing about .mobis strength in the mobile industry - they began to develop.
Not all .mobi businesses will expose their profit but this does not mean that they are doing poorly. It is simply none of anyones business. How much profit they made was either based from their great marketing in either advertisement or the .mobi domain itself. Quite honestly, if you are in business, you will do whatever it takes to get all of your customers. Some choose advertising on TV, radio and magazines... why not a .mobi? I would, why not you?
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A new TLD is not a gain for anybody, not end users, nor developers. It further balkanizes things, and divides the namespace up in a way that breaks the existing echeme.
Think of it this way -- it's like the early days of the web, when everyone was putting "www." in front of their domains names. Pointless (as the web has a dedicated port, there's no need to have a unique domain name), stupid, and caused inconvenience for everyone. Nowadays, people recognize the pointlessness of it and very few sites require the prefix.
.mobi is the same mistake, just on the other end of the domain name.
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Re: well......
It also didn't make it any easier to find any website ether. Say I try to go to youtube on my cell phone, do I just type in www.youtube.mobi and hope it works? Hell no. Why would I do that? www.youtube.com automatically detects I'm on a mobile device and changes the output accordingly. It just redirects you to m.youtube.com (hay, same effect, no extra money).
So, why would Google pay for youtube.mobi? The only reason is so Google doesn't get bad press when people go to youtube.mobi and find a squatters page, or worse. And scaring websites into paying more for another TLD that's not going to be used sounds like a money grab to me.
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.Mobi
The shortsightedness of some people like the techdirt guys as far as .mobi is concerned has always amazed me. I thought we were dealing with adults with a brain but no they ceaselessly keep on bashing .mobi in a real juvenile way.
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Haters?
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Re: .Mobi
Not hating, not smearing. Just questioning how useful, and given how long it's been out and its lack of usage, it seems our points were supported by reality.
And arguing that .mobi helps folks where the .com is already taken is bogus too. How often did that actually happen? Most .com owners felt compelled to buy the .mobi to protect themselves. That's why this was all a money generating scam.
The shortsightedness of some people like the techdirt guys as far as .mobi is concerned has always amazed me.
Then why not explain how .mobi is actually useful
I thought we were dealing with adults with a brain but no they ceaselessly keep on bashing .mobi in a real juvenile way.
Wow. The only thing juvenile in this thread is you implying we're "children." We brought up a legitimate concern years ago that has been supported by what's happened over the years. What's juvenile in that?
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.mobi
It seems more intuitive to type in brand.tld than prefix.brand.tld. And that's partly why some brands are considering applying for their own .brand tld to further simplify usability & branding.
As to the relative "usefulness" of a top level domain - of the 94+ million .com/.net domains out there, very few are actually "useful", and most people only go to an absurdly small fraction of them. With over 1.5 billion internet users, what's "useless" for you may well be "useful" for another.
.Mobi originally set out to become a convention for mobility online. The world is slowly but surely moving from a wired internet to a mobile one, and I believe that .mobi has a credible opportunity to own a spot in that world (and that's part of why we bought the company). Time will tell, of course!
Ram Mohan [afilias, Twitter @rmohan123]
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Re: .mobi
But why do you need a separate TLD to set standards for mobility online? Particularly one that has four letters -- that's an extra character to hunt & peck on the little keyboards!
I would be very surprised if .mobi became well-used, for a whole host of reason, except perhaps by vendors of mobile products (where it would at least make some kind of sense).
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Re: .mobi
Hmm. .mobi is longer than .com. And which internet users get "confused" honestly? Besides people weren't suggesting a different subdomain, they were suggesting that the site do browse recognition and move people over to a mobile version. Just like we do with Techdirt.
.Mobi originally set out to become a convention for mobility online. The world is slowly but surely moving from a wired internet to a mobile one, and I believe that .mobi has a credible opportunity to own a spot in that world (and that's part of why we bought the company). Time will tell, of course!
The trend is pretty clear. Mobile devices increasingly can handle fully functional websites. Why does it need mobile optimized domains?
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.Mobi
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