dotMobi is the newest domain to join us on the world wide web. Its not just any domain though its what is called a TLD (Top Level Domain) which means in layman terms that its comparable to .com, .net, and .org.
So what is the big deal with dotMobi? Well aside from being a new TLD its also the only domain sold for the express purpose of serving the growing number of mobile web users. If you surf the web using your (smart) mobile phone or PDA, etc then you fall into that group of every growing users that could benefit from a dotMobi domain.
Huh? Okay here is an example.
Scene is set - You’re in London having a great old time with your mates but you live in St Albans (I live there) so you need to catch a tube to Kings Cross then the First Capital Connect train to St Albans. You are out later than you planned and don’t know the train times or if there is a service disruption/cancellation to expect.
Today - You are in a pub, you don’t have the phone number for information, so you go back blind or you do have the information number but you must excuse yourself and go outside to here the telephone help system. After 15+ min (£2+ for the call) of picking different menus and finally getting information regarding Kings Cross and St Albans along with train times, you go back inside the pub, and rejoin the conversation. That was a big hassle right?
Tomorrow (dotMobi world) - You hop on your mobile browser type in firstcapitalconnect.mobi click live information then scheduling. Voila, train information. Maybe 2 minutes. Didn’t need to leave the pub, you download the data so you can refer to it should you forget the information between now and when you board the train later. Sound great!?
Well it should be great news, unfortunately having dotMobi the domain isn’t going to make your website suddenly viewable to millions of mobile devices. As a matter of fact its not going to do anything. Yup, absolutely nothing. The reason it is useless is because you don’t need dotMobi to make your site compatible for mobile devices, it requires retraining the public from dotCom, dotNet, dotCountry (.co.uk), etc which is expensive, and its just one more domain you have to administer to protect your brand from being corrupted should someone else buy it
In essense dotMobi is the biggest fraud perpetrated upon corporations recently.
I didn’t buy dotMobi so what can I do to support my mobile users?
Contact your system admin’s, and get them working on your web server because the first thing you need to do is see if anyone is coming to your site using a mobile device and your web server has that information you just need to know where to look and collect it. Then do some market research and see if there is an interest in your products/services/content from mobile device users. Then ask your web designers to build a new 2nd version of your site that is designed for mobile device users, as our needs are much different from PC based users, then when the site is ready, have your system administrators configure your server to detect mobile devices and redirect them to your special mobile users website. Lastly get your marketing department to tell the world you are now serving the mobile device market.
A bit of an overview about the mobile market
It is growing between 25-30% per year and the demand for services are increasing with the maturation of 3G technologies. Soon 3.5G will be available meaning broadband internet in a phone. With 3.5G technology we will start measuring phone download speeds in Megabites not Kilobites (or is that bytes? I always forget which). Screens are getting bigger, brighter, and sharper. Services such as mobile email are maturing, data seems to finally be getting cheaper not just faster, its time now for mobile content to be developed.
Brochure information to consider:
• 90,000 domain names will be registered within the first 10 days, that’s just over 6 registrations a minute.
• 13,000 trademarked .mobi domains have already been registered
• Costs £100+ per registration.
Websites that are already registered are:
• Cityguide.mobi
• Bmw.mobi
• I need more examples of dotMobi websites
If you have anything to add e.g. mobile websites, some key summary info please comment or email me and I will be happy to update this post.
A friend of mine has a specialist website that he publishes only about mobile information, news, and products if you want to read more about it check out these posts if you want to visit his home page go to SMSTextNews:
• dotMobi auctions top ten domains - reaction: SMSTextNews
• Looking at .mobi: SMSTextNews
• .mobi .sucks .eggs: SMSTextNew
• dotMobi news, and information: Technorati Search .mobi
• GoDaddy and more IT mis-information: BlogPC, marketing distortion and out-right lies from the dotMobi supporters
[tags].mobi,mobi,dotmobi,smartphones,mobile,domains,tld,3g[/tags]
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{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Santosh 10.22.06 at 7:40 pm
I think dotmobi is a marketing gimmick to push & pull user into mobile marketplace.
It might work but I think any company that wants to get in mobile market place can customize solutions as available in their website for mobile. Be it dotmobi, dotcom or any other dots.
This discussion brings one nice insight: Any new solution now getting developed should take mobile marketplace into account and architect/design the solutions accordingly. Multiple device and content streaming mechanism will be key aspect going forward.
Roger, this is an excellent article.
Santosh 10.22.06 at 8:40 pm
I think dotmobi is a marketing gimmick to push & pull user into mobile marketplace.
It might work but I think any company that wants to get in mobile market place can customize solutions as available in their website for mobile. Be it dotmobi, dotcom or any other dots.
This discussion brings one nice insight: Any new solution now getting developed should take mobile marketplace into account and architect/design the solutions accordingly. Multiple device and content streaming mechanism will be key aspect going forward.
Roger, this is an excellent article.
Caz Mockett 10.23.06 at 11:30 am
Roger, your scenario is correct, except that you shouldn’t need to get your system admins to do the hard work for redirecting users to a whole new version of the site!
If your site uses (X)HTML for content and CSS for presentation, you can have a completely separate stylsheet specified for mobile devices.
Usually the syntax is somthing like:
But if you use media=”screen” for your existing stylsheet and write a new one for media=”handheld” - defining styles and font sizes suitable for mobile devices, then your users can browse the same content in a much more usable manner.
The overhead? One more stylsheet for your site (you might already have a specific stylsheet for print, so it’s not much different). Bring on the mobile web! And you’re right - who needs the .mobi TLD anyway?
Caz Mockett 10.23.06 at 11:32 am
Damn, there was a bit missing after the “the syntax is something like” - I used the code button to enclose that bit, but it didn’t come out. What was meant to be included was:
Caz Mockett 10.23.06 at 11:32 am
OK, for the third time!!
>link href=”css/design_style.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” media=”all” /<
Caz Mockett 10.23.06 at 11:33 am
I give up…
Caz Mockett 10.23.06 at 12:30 pm
Roger, your scenario is correct, except that you shouldn't need to get your system admins to do the hard work for redirecting users to a whole new version of the site!
If your site uses (X)HTML for content and CSS for presentation, you can have a completely separate stylsheet specified for mobile devices.
Usually the syntax is somthing like:
But if you use media=”screen” for your existing stylsheet and write a new one for media=”handheld” - defining styles and font sizes suitable for mobile devices, then your users can browse the same content in a much more usable manner.
The overhead? One more stylsheet for your site (you might already have a specific stylsheet for print, so it's not much different). Bring on the mobile web! And you're right - who needs the .mobi TLD anyway?
Caz Mockett 10.23.06 at 12:32 pm
Damn, there was a bit missing after the “the syntax is something like” - I used the code button to enclose that bit, but it didn't come out. What was meant to be included was:
Caz Mockett 10.23.06 at 12:32 pm
OK, for the third time!!
>link href=”css/design_style.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” media=”all” /<
Caz Mockett 10.23.06 at 12:33 pm
I give up…
Marcus Greenwood 10.23.06 at 7:34 pm
blah blah. at least the one positive thing that comes out of more TLD extensions being made available is that every new TLD de-values that pointless trade in domain names. business.com - barf!!!
imho, a website is a website, whether it be on a mobile phone, a tv, or a pc. we need convergence, not divergence.
oh well, 90,000 x £100 = a sweet £9 mil in 10 days for what is really just a small modification to the types of domain names allowed to be queried by a DNS. good luck to them!
Marcus Greenwood 10.23.06 at 8:34 pm
blah blah. at least the one positive thing that comes out of more TLD extensions being made available is that every new TLD de-values that pointless trade in domain names. business.com - barf!!!
imho, a website is a website, whether it be on a mobile phone, a tv, or a pc. we need convergence, not divergence.
oh well, 90,000 x £100 = a sweet £9 mil in 10 days for what is really just a small modification to the types of domain names allowed to be queried by a DNS. good luck to them!
Vance Hedderel, Director, PR & Communications, dotMobi 10.24.06 at 9:53 am
Having worked — at a distance — for now-convicted white collar criminal Bernard Ebbers at WorldCom, I’ve seen big frauds perpetrated on corporations. dotMobi is not one of them.
Since it looks you’ve been following the “SMS Text News†discussions, I’ll just say here that we’ve talked about the items you’ve mentioned in our blog’s “Misconceptions” series.
I may not be able to change your mind about the value of dotMobi, but just so you have right facts at hand for your brochure information … To date, 190,000 .mobi domain names have been registered. The vast majority of those were registered after our general registration period opened. That means most names were picked up at a market rate along the lines of £8-10 per registration per year with a two-year minimum.
Vance Hedderel, Director, PR & 10.24.06 at 10:53 am
Having worked — at a distance — for now-convicted white collar criminal Bernard Ebbers at WorldCom, I've seen big frauds perpetrated on corporations. dotMobi is not one of them.
Since it looks you've been following the “SMS Text News†discussions, I'll just say here that we've talked about the items you've mentioned in our blog's “Misconceptions” series.
I may not be able to change your mind about the value of dotMobi, but just so you have right facts at hand for your brochure information … To date, 190,000 .mobi domain names have been registered. The vast majority of those were registered after our general registration period opened. That means most names were picked up at a market rate along the lines of £8-10 per registration per year with a two-year minimum.
Technological Winter » Blog Archives » dotMobi really a for profit educational institution 10.24.06 at 2:26 pm
Technological Winter » Bl 10.24.06 at 3:26 pm
Ecacofonix 11.02.06 at 4:35 pm
Thanks for the useful post
The first few dotMobi domains do not appear very impressive - in fact a couple of them have little of no information ( see The dotMobi Directory @ Mobinomy for a good number of .mobi web sites)…I think folks are just figuring out to design the pages, so hopefully we will have more interesting content on .mobi sites soon…
It perhaps is not exactly necessary, the dotMobi TLD, but it is certainly interesting, goven that there are four times the number of mobile phones as PCs!
Ec
Ecacofonix 11.02.06 at 4:35 pm
Thanks for the useful post
The first few dotMobi domains do not appear very impressive - in fact a couple of them have little of no information ( see The dotMobi Directory @ Mobinomy for a good number of .mobi web sites)…I think folks are just figuring out to design the pages, so hopefully we will have more interesting content on .mobi sites soon…
It perhaps is not exactly necessary, the dotMobi TLD, but it is certainly interesting, goven that there are four times the number of mobile phones as PCs!
Ec