TechWinter

The other day I wrote a post about dotMobi called ‘About dotMobi(.mobi) the newest domain on the web’, and got a few comments as well I got a comment from Vance Hedderel, Director, PR & Communications, dotMobi whom appears to be running a blog covering dotMobi pre-launch, and during the initial roll-out.

Vance does suggest in his comment (see my bolding of key point) that there are ‘Misconceptions’ regarding his companies TLD legitimacy and I think he may have a point.  I think I may have been partly incorrect (see below quote for more)

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.

Interestingly as I read through the material on the ‘dotMobi legitimacy’ question I and so many others have raised one thing seemed to be clear.  DotMobi was doing lots to help foster support for the Mobile web.  I think this is great and definitely goes a long way to making dotMobi more respected as a benevolent entity rather than a blatant rip off.

However all these good works and free documentation don’t change one core fact, they are selling a domain that doesn’t need to exist.  How they go about selling it, ethically or otherwise is a question of corporate culture, but doesn’t change the foolishness of the business itself.

If I started selling a car with 5 wheels instead of 4 with no material benefit would you buy it?  If during the development of that car the manufacturer developed a new and better tire and with the launch of the car released that technology to the world, would that make you buy the car with 5 tires? 

So why is the title ‘dobmobi really a for profit educational institution’?  Because the only way any of this makes sense to me is if you think of buying dotMobi as a fixed price donation or tip for producing all this documentation and helping standards they are so happy about.

What do you think?