.mobi The "Mobi is Dead" Presentation

whitebark said:

Sorry mobi fans but like many other metrics on .mobi this one suggests things are not as rosy as some may proclaim. It's been two years and still only .01% market saturation. That's very bad. Anyone who has taken even marketing 101 would know achieving that low of a take-up of a product spells disaster.

If you somehow see roses where I see pure numbers please explain how that can be good for mobi.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't say its bad since, its really starting to launch now. I noticed increased traffic every month. Now the hole point of this, is that the traffic is coming from Search Engines

Stats for zem.mobi now averages 400 Unique visitors, 700 visitors and 15,000 hits a month. Now that is with out any advertising at all.

rxd.mobi is a Page Rank 4, and I get emails all the time from large advertsing companies and how they want to work with me. Quatro Wireless, millenium media and more... now I didnt accept because I plan on doing my own marketing campain after 3.0 comes out.

iwantinfo.mobi averages about 20 clicks a day on admob, some days I make $10, thats not bad since its not advertized at all. Most of the traffic is from SEO

I forgot to mention ipad.mobi (that averages 60 visitors a day and 2-3 new signups a day) THis one I advertise about $25 a month through admob and everytime I advertise I get about 3 new users to the dollar. Not bad since, ipad.mobi 3.0 is coming out and I am gona charge money.

NO Need to applogize, I am quite pleased with my results and look forward to a very bright future with .mobi, because my stats only show increases every month. Do you have any stats whitebark to share from your .mobi sites? And I should say the rest can you prove any traffic for developed sites to prove its not alive and kicking? (I am not talking about parked pages) But a fully developed .mobi and where does your traffic come from the most?

whitebark said:

Sorry mobi fans but like many other metrics on .mobi this one suggests things are not as rosy as some may proclaim. It's been two years and still only .01% market saturation. That's very bad. Anyone who has taken even marketing 101 would know achieving that low of a take-up of a product spells disaster.

If you somehow see roses where I see pure numbers please explain how that can be good for mobi.

Click to expand...

Where did you take "marketing 101?"

thebiffenator said:

I wouldn't say its bad since, its really starting to launch now. I noticed increased traffic every month. Now the hole point of this, is that the traffic is coming from Search Engines

Stats for zem.mobi now averages 400 Unique visitors, 700 visitors and 15,000 hits a month. Now that is with out any advertising at all.

rxd.mobi is a Page Rank 4, and I get emails all the time from large advertsing companies and how they want to work with me. Quatro Wireless, millenium media and more... now I didnt accept because I plan on doing my own marketing campain after 3.0 comes out.

iwantinfo.mobi averages about 20 clicks a day on admob, some days I make $10, thats not bad since its not advertized at all. Most of the traffic is from SEO

I forgot to mention ipad.mobi (that averages 60 visitors a day and 2-3 new signups a day) THis one I advertise about $25 a month through admob and everytime I advertise I get about 3 new users to the dollar. Not bad since, ipad.mobi 3.0 is coming out and I am gona charge money.

NO Need to applogize, I am quite pleased with my results and look forward to a very bright future with .mobi, because my stats only show increases every month. Do you have any stats whitebark to share from your .mobi sites? And I should say the rest can you prove any traffic for developed sites to prove its not alive and kicking? (I am not talking about parked pages) But a fully developed .mobi and where does your traffic come from the most?

Click to expand...

Have you found where your traffic is coming from? Is it all type-in, or are your sites well-optimized?

I'd be happy with stats like those :tu:

GF said:

Have you found where your traffic is coming from? Is it all type-in, or are your sites well-optimized?

I'd be happy with stats like those :tu:

Click to expand...

Most are from direct request for the hits. (which probably means bookmarked) I also linked alot of my sites up together for example on zem.mobi, it shows ipad's banner and on rxd.mobi it shows Ipad as well. And bunkers.mobi has iPad as well, so that explaines why it is getting alot of traffic to boot. I would say the traffic is mostly all spread out throug the countries (I do see alot of india). I also get more mobile phone browser hits then PC. Right now it seems like Yahoo is
doing great for the search engine.

Now when each site was launced (over a year ago except for Zem, that was launched in April) I submitited it to every directory I could find along with Yahoo ect.. and the sites were built by pros that optimized it for SEO.

For example go to find.mobi and type in Pharmacy. RXD owns that page being #1... Now is that the direction for mobile search engines?..who knows...But before rxd.mobi was (#4-#6 for 1 year by typing in RXD)on the regular Google page, now it is on the 4th page.....So by thinking (IMHO) is that major things are happening now to divide mobile content from regular content.

Correction: just checked RXD is on the second page now, but last week on the 4th page.....I just think everythign is getting reworked and the benifit of a .mobi name IMHO is possiby the BOTs or what ever you call them will pick it up and place it higher in the SE for mobile searches.

HeyNow said:

Where did you take "marketing 101?"

Click to expand...

I did take marketing 101 and those numbers are bad.

IMO: the trend is going towards the .com 's, .net's ... detecting the browser type and returning a page appropriate for the browser. That certainly is the way I'm going. I just completed a a site called www.gpa.me which I designed from scratch with browser sensing in mind. If this site design works out I will be moving that design to my other sites regardless if they are .mobi or any other extension.

HeyNow said:

Where did you take "marketing 101?"

Click to expand...

I have a degree in business so... explain how after two years that .01% is somehow - in any way - good for mobi. Any other product or service by most companies would be abandoned or repackaged/redesigned etc with numbers that low. Heck even "new coke" had a higher market penetration than that!

miitree said:

I did take marketing 101 and those numbers are bad.

IMO: the trend is going towards the .com 's, .net's ... detecting the browser type and returning a page appropriate for the browser. That certainly is the way I'm going. I just completed a a site called www.gpa.me which I designed from scratch with browser sensing in mind. If this site design works out I will be moving that design to my other sites regardless if they are .mobi or any other extension.

Click to expand...

Will it be M.site.com or M.site.net or site.com/mobile or site.net/mobile or wap.site.com/com/net/asia or will it have a browser sensingcapability? If it does have browser site capability, how will it act with standard small screen ?at the same time what about the iPhone? Will the site be catered for brief periods of searches and to view quick sites to get the info?

Now GPA.me is a great name congrats on that, but how will people know if it is mobilized? and do they know about the .me extenstion yet?

Also how will the SE's act with the future of the mobile websites?

My last question...Why is it so bad to have .mobi invovled in a mass confussion when obviously "the mobile web is a goldmine" .mobi is only and extension and "what if" SE's love it towards the mobile web?

I will answer this by self to start (The mobile web will PROBABLY PRODUCE HUGE REVENUE on a light note and will be bigger then TV & Radio advertisiments) IMHO everyone is fighting for ground including me and others, but we are not the only ones!

Soon everyone will want a piece of the "mobile web" and people will kick them selfs to wonder why they didint see this coming, includeing major advertisment companies!

I have a minor in business if that means anything and a major in Art

sdsinc said:

It's not only the SEO cicles that diss mobi... there is no mention of it in cellular industry shows either. Only the speculators care, and many have already shifted focus to the latest extensions like .asia or .me

Click to expand...

How will this help out the "Mobile Web'? And if you any interest in the "Mobile Web" please state your claims and stats that you have "I am talking about mobile web traffic from either a .mobi or other moblized site???

Thats a fair question IMHO :hi:

if there is no reply, then I will assume that you could be a speculator? Please. Tell us all of your knowledge/oppinion once again after you supply traffic facts? :loveyou:

ALso question 2 "SDsinc" how many .mobi sites do you have and when did you buy them?

Question 3: List you mobilized .com/.net/.me/.asia or anything and I will check it on my phone and an iPhone

No one else realy has done it so that is why I am asking...the rest rely on other Blogs and forums and people talk .mobi down like it's there job! :td:

Where do you stand SDsinc?

I don't own a single .mobi Brian. I am a naysayer

whitebark said:

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/018004.html

Click to expand...

I'd like to thank whitebark for providing this link.

Don't you just love how Ms. Donna Pawar misrepresents the data she is providing? I know I do; its just makes it that much easier to disprove her arguments.

Why don't we take a look at the numbers she provided...

Ms. Donna Power said:

Some stats about mobile web browsing:

84.8% of the iPhone users and 58.2% of total smart phone users access news and information from the hand-held device.
58.6% of iPhone users and 37% of smart phone users visited a search engine on their phones.
30.9% of iPhone users have tuned into mobile TV or a video clip from their phone.
74.1% of iPhone users and 27.9% of smart phone users listen to music on their mobile devices (Source: mMetrics)
Nielsen mobile recently proclaimed that the mobile internet had reached “critical mass” w/ more than 40 million users today.

Click to expand...

If you are a savvy business person you can just see through Ms. Donna Pawar's bag of smoke 'n' mirrors. And for one thing, I'm not buying. One of things that .mobi investors have been called from the naysayer camp, is having rosy colored glasses, but its actually the naysayers that are kidding themselves when they use Ms. Pawar's statistics as facts.

I'll take a moment to analyze her statistics...
1) All references are in terms of the iPhone or smart phones. This in itself is misleading, since the entire global market is not made up of iPhone/Smart phones. In fact, according to AdMob Mobile Metrics, iPhones + Smart Phones make up less than 5% of the global market share as of July 2008 data. Therefore, if I put this into perspective in correlation with her percentages, the numbers are not nearly as large as she tries to imply.

Only 4.24% of the entire global mobile market (percentage of iPhone marketshare) and 2.91% of the entire global mobile market (percentage of smart phone marketshare) access news and information from their hand-held device.

2.93% of the entire global mobile market (percentage of iPhone marketshare) and 1.85% of the entire global mobile market (percentage of smart phone marketshare) visited a search engine on their phones.*
1.55% of the entire global mobile market (percentage of iPhone marketshare) have tuned into mobile TV or a video clip from their phone.*
3.71% of the entire global mobile market (percentage of iPhone marketshare) and 1.40% of the entire global mobile market (percentage of smart phone marketshare) listen to music on their mobile devices.*

*Of course there are generalizations that can be made for most mobile phones; when it comes to accessing information, search engines, etc. However, this data does not accurately portray the global mobile market. Therefore, to present data as if the entire world was made up of iPhone/SmartPhones is seriously flawed and that is what I am portraying by adjusting percentages to show the iPhone/Smartphone marketshare in comparison to the global market.

2)
Nielsen mobile recently proclaimed that the mobile internet had reached “critical mass” w/ more than 40 million users today.

Now, she then follows to misrepresent what the Nielsen mobile statistics are saying. Since, the Nielsen mobile statistics seem to imply that it includes all mobile phones, and not just iPhones/Smart Phones. However, Nielsen Mobile does not provide sufficient data to ascertain what actual percentage of these 40 million is really iPhone/Smart Phone users. Therefore, the reference is flawed. I for one can vouch to be constantly on my phone using my internet access and have an unlimited data plan with my mobile service provider and its not an iPhone/SmartPhone, per se, therefore to assume that the entire base is made up of iPhone/SmartPhones is certainly flawed.

Another interesting point she brings up...

Ms. Donna Pawar said:

Why is .mobi less than ideal?

Bad for SEO (Mobile and Traditional)
Splits traffic, you have to duplicate effort.
Splits links
Splits Index size
Doesn’t benefit from history
Risks Duplicate content
Confusing for Users
There's no preferrence for it in Mobile search engines
No unique assets or features
Best Practices
[...]
Set up a subdomain just for mobile – something like m.domain.com; wap.domain.com, etc. and then duplicate your existing site on the subdomain, but tweaked specifically for the smaller format of handheld devices.

Advantages to this method? Just update your existing code. Adjust the level of content so it’s easier to read on small screens/on the go.

Click to expand...

So she states that .mobi is less than ideal, because of duplication, yet she suggests doing just that later on for a subdomain. Is it just me, or did Ms. Pawar just contradict her own message? And if I do follow with adapting the content to be optimized for mobile devices by duplicating on a subdomain (which subdomain will I use? Will the mobile user magically know and remember which variation I chose for my mobilized version? Either m.company.com, mobile.company.com, wap.company.com, oh wait I think its company.com/mobi, or what was it?).

And if it seemed to you like you just created an entire mobile site, which could have been easily been placed in a .mobi domain, well you are correct. The only glitch would be that by using Ms. Pawar's suggestion I just lost who knows how many mobile users that would have remembered and recognized my site had I made it a .mobi website, just pure in simple, company.mobi. Imagine that, it couldn't had been simpler. Yet I chose to use some kind of subdomain, which the user can't remember or may confuse with another company's mobilized version (e.g. wait was it live.com/mobi or was it cnn.com that used the '/mobi' - I can't recall), thus they just didn't visit my mobilized site at all.

Now, if you think auto-detect is the answer, think again. I know I would hate to be forced to access a full blown website, when I wanted to access a mobilized version of it. Why is it so hard for webmasters/seo to see this? I still remember the fixed vs fluidic argument when it came to creating websites, why oh why would you want to create an auto-detect code that sets a fixed full-blown website, if on an iPhone/SmartPhone, when in fact its not what the user may want.

Atleast when it came to the CSS; I felt that Ms. Pawar had at least tried it before actually making assumptions that it would work on all phones, so kudos to her for doing at least a bit of research when it comes to CSS implementation.

Dynamic mobile sites. Now that is an idea! Imagine how much of a drain it will be on your servers when your site becomes popular enough that it actually is getting millions of hits or when its under a DOS attack by a hacker. In fact, some hosting packages have restrictions when it comes to having scripts running continuously. And if you are not careful you may be terminated by your host provider.

Now, I really would like to know where MS. Pawar got her stats from:

Less than 0.01% of SMBs have invested in a .mobi website.

Click to expand...

I can say that .com is actually declining 5% each year since 2000 when it comes to the quality of websites, but that means nothing until I actually give a source or reference as to how this was determined. Likewise, I'd like to request how the 0.01% was derived for .mobi websites.

So now I leave you all to ponder "Ms. Donna Pawar's Truth" vs Reality.

DBADT2007 said:

I'd like to thank whitebark for providing this link.

Don't you just love how Ms. Donna Pawar misrepresents the data she is providing? I know I do; its just makes it that much easier to disprove her arguments.

Why don't we take a look at the numbers she provided...


If you are a savvy business person you can just see through Ms. Donna Pawar's bag of smoke 'n' mirrors. And for one thing, I'm not buying. One of things that .mobi investors have been called from the naysayer camp, is having rosy colored glasses, but its actually the naysayers that are kidding themselves when they use Ms. Pawar's statistics as facts.

I'll take a moment to analyze her statistics...
1) All references are in terms of the iPhone or smart phones. This in itself is misleading, since the entire global market is not made up of iPhone/Smart phones. In fact, according to AdMob Mobile Metrics, iPhones + Smart Phones make up less than 5% of the global market share as of July 2008 data. Therefore, if I put this into perspective in correlation with her percentages, the numbers are not nearly as large as she tries to imply.

Only 4.24% of the entire global mobile market (percentage of iPhone marketshare) and 2.91% of the entire global mobile market (percentage of smart phone marketshare) access news and information from their hand-held device.

2.93% of the entire global mobile market (percentage of iPhone marketshare) and 1.85% of the entire global mobile market (percentage of smart phone marketshare) visited a search engine on their phones.*
1.55% of the entire global mobile market (percentage of iPhone marketshare) have tuned into mobile TV or a video clip from their phone.*
3.71% of the entire global mobile market (percentage of iPhone marketshare) and 1.40% of the entire global mobile market (percentage of smart phone marketshare) listen to music on their mobile devices.*

*Of course there are generalizations that can be made for most mobile phones; when it comes to accessing information, search engines, etc. However, this data does not accurately portray the global mobile market. Therefore, to present data as if the entire world was made up of iPhone/SmartPhones is seriously flawed and that is what I am portraying by adjusting percentages to show the iPhone/Smartphone marketshare in comparison to the global market.

2)
Nielsen mobile recently proclaimed that the mobile internet had reached “critical mass” w/ more than 40 million users today.

Now, she then follows to misrepresent what the Nielsen mobile statistics are saying. Since, the Nielsen mobile statistics seem to imply that it includes all mobile phones, and not just iPhones/Smart Phones. However, Nielsen Mobile does not provide sufficient data to ascertain what actual percentage of these 40 million is really iPhone/Smart Phone users. Therefore, the reference is flawed. I for one can vouch to be constantly on my phone using my internet access and have an unlimited data plan with my mobile service provider and its not an iPhone/SmartPhone, per se, therefore to assume that the entire base is made up of iPhone/SmartPhones is certainly flawed.

Another interesting point she brings up...


So she states that .mobi is less than ideal, because of duplication, yet she suggests doing just that later on for a subdomain. Is it just me, or did Ms. Pawar just contradict her own message? And if I do follow with adapting the content to be optimized for mobile devices by duplicating on a subdomain (which subdomain will I use? Will the mobile user magically know and remember which variation I chose for my mobilized version? Either m.company.com, mobile.company.com, wap.company.com, oh wait I think its company.com/mobi, or what was it?).

And if it seemed to you like you just created an entire mobile site, which could have been easily been placed in a .mobi domain, well you are correct. The only glitch would be that by using Ms. Pawar's suggestion I just lost who knows how many mobile users that would have remembered and recognized my site had I made it a .mobi website, just pure in simple, company.mobi. Imagine that, it couldn't had been simpler. Yet I chose to use some kind of subdomain, which the user can't remember or may confuse with another company's mobilized version (e.g. wait was it live.com/mobi or was it cnn.com that used the '/mobi' - I can't recall), thus they just didn't visit my mobilized site at all.

Now, if you think auto-detect is the answer, think again. I know I would hate to be forced to access a full blown website, when I wanted to access a mobilized version of it. Why is it so hard for webmasters/seo to see this? I still remember the fixed vs fluidic argument when it came to creating websites, why oh why would you want to create an auto-detect code that sets a fixed full-blown website, if on an iPhone/SmartPhone, when in fact its not what the user may want.

Atleast when it came to the CSS; I felt that Ms. Pawar had at least tried it before actually making assumptions that it would work on all phones, so kudos to her for doing at least a bit of research when it comes to CSS implementation.

Dynamic mobile sites. Now that is an idea! Imagine how much of a drain it will be on your servers when your site becomes popular enough that it actually is getting millions of hits or when its under a DOS attack by a hacker. In fact, some hosting packages have restrictions when it comes to having scripts running continuously. And if you are not careful you may be terminated by your host provider.

Now, I really would like to know where MS. Pawar got her stats from:

I can say that .com is actually declining 5% each year since 2000 when it comes to the quality of websites, but that means nothing until I actually give a source or reference as to how this was determined. Likewise, I'd like to request how the 0.01% was derived for .mobi websites.

So now I leave you all to ponder "Ms. Donna Pawar's Truth" vs Reality.

Click to expand...

Excellent post!! It's weird how some people ignore the obvious. With subdomains, to many variations come into play. Thus, the consumer is left guessing every time they access internet via mobile. Now with mobi, it's all good. Easy to remember and the content is readily available every time!

rep+

thebiffenator said:

Will it be M.site.com or M.site.net or site.com/mobile or site.net/mobile or wap.site.com/com/net/asia or will it have a browser sensingcapability? If it does have browser site capability, how will it act with standard small screen ?at the same time what about the iPhone? Will the site be catered for brief periods of searches and to view quick sites to get the info?

Click to expand...

Thank you for commenting on my site. I don't know if this is the way it should be done but the way I handle the dynamic detection is by simply using the same url for all users. All responses are generated dynamically. I have 3 types of responses. Full web browser, iphone, and other mobile. I use a very simplified test on user agent to determine which of the 3 types to use for this request. Then the response if formatted accordingly. So the URL is always the same.

The subroutine for browser detection follows...
------------------------------------------

sub check_browser
{
$mobile = "";
if ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /iPhone/ ) {$mobile = "iphone";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /iPod/ ) {$mobile = "iphone";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Android/ ) {$mobile = "iphone";}
elsif ($ENV{'HTTP_REFERER'} =~ /testiphone/){$mobile = "iphone";}

elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Windows CE/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /BlackBerry/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /AvantGo/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /DoCoMo/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Vodafone/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /WM5 PIE/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Opera Mini/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /MOT\-/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /LGE/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Nokia/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Palm/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /SAMSUNG/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /SonyEricsson/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /PLAYSTATION/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /SymbianOS/ ) {$mobile = "y";}

elsif ($ENV{'HTTP_X_WAP_PROFILE'} ne "") {$mobile = "y";}
else {}

return;
}
-------------------------------------------------------

I think this covers over 90% of the smart phone target audience. I didn't want to use the huge databases which map user agents because I think they would put too much load on the server. Search engine indexing at times can get very high. I have seen requests at a rate of about 3 per second continuous 24 hours a day. So rapid response is important to me.

Also, I have many .mobi websites. The most successful are www.iteams.mobi and www.ischools.mobi. So believe me I do want .mobi to succeed. It is just that revenue wise the sites don't generate much when displayed on a mobile device. But they do get good revenue when accessed from full browsers (I would estimate over 95% of the total revenue). Once again the sites use dynamic browser detection.

Overall the .mobi experience for me has been positive in that it got me thinking about mobile devices. However, I think the future is for the more conventional domains (.com, .me) using browser sensing and returning a page accordingly. USAToday and CNN are good examples of this.

Again thanks for commenting on my site.

miitree said:

Thank you for commenting on my site. I don't know if this is the way it should be done but the way I handle the dynamic detection is by simply using the same url for all users. All responses are generated dynamically. I have 3 types of responses. Full web browser, iphone, and other mobile. I use a very simplified test on user agent to determine which of the 3 types to use for this request. Then the response if formatted accordingly. So the URL is always the same.

The subroutine for browser detection follows...
------------------------------------------

sub check_browser
{
$mobile = "";
if ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /iPhone/ ) {$mobile = "iphone";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /iPod/ ) {$mobile = "iphone";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Android/ ) {$mobile = "iphone";}
elsif ($ENV{'HTTP_REFERER'} =~ /testiphone/){$mobile = "iphone";}

elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Windows CE/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /BlackBerry/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /AvantGo/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /DoCoMo/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Vodafone/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /WM5 PIE/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Opera Mini/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /MOT\-/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /LGE/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Nokia/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Palm/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /SAMSUNG/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /SonyEricsson/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /PLAYSTATION/ ) {$mobile = "y";}
elsif ( $ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /SymbianOS/ ) {$mobile = "y";}

elsif ($ENV{'HTTP_X_WAP_PROFILE'} ne "") {$mobile = "y";}
else {}

return;
}
-------------------------------------------------------

I think this covers over 90% of the smart phone target audience. I didn't want to use the huge databases which map user agents because I think they would put too much load on the server. Search engine indexing at times can get very high. I have seen requests at a rate of about 3 per second continuous 24 hours a day. So rapid response is important to me.

Also, I have many .mobi websites. The most successful are www.iteams.mobi and www.ischools.mobi. So believe me I do want .mobi to succeed. It is just that revenue wise the sites don't generate much when displayed on a mobile device. But they do get good revenue when accessed from full browsers (I would estimate over 95% of the total revenue). Once again the sites use dynamic browser detection.

Overall the .mobi experience for me has been positive in that it got me thinking about mobile devices. However, I think the future is for the more conventional domains (.com, .me) using browser sensing and returning a page accordingly. USAToday and CNN are good examples of this.

Again thanks for commenting on my site.

Click to expand...

Auto detection is great for the sites that use it. The problem is, all don't. And until that unlikely scenario comes into play, there will always be doubt in a mobile surfers mind. Nothing quite like visiting a full blown site that takes forever to load and either shuts down my browser or doesn't display. That's where mobi steps in to promise ones visit will be mobile friendly.

As for your non-mobi sites (such as GPS)...how will surfers know it's mobile friendly? Are they supposed to guess or cross their fingers? I'm willing to bet few non-domainers out there have heard of .me...I'm not saying mobi is either...but it's got quite a jump on .me....The only way I can see is by you spending loads of cash to promote it as such. I'm not trying to disrespect you in any way. Just trying to see your logic.

keithmt said:

It's weird how some people ignore the obvious.

Click to expand...

:D :D :D

The truth will set you free...

Everyone knows I'm a naysayer... so I'll let it rest.

Work In Progress said:

Auto detection is great for the sites that use it. The problem is, all don't. And until that unlikely scenario comes into play, there will always be doubt in a mobile surfers mind. Nothing quite like visiting a full blown site that takes forever to load and either shuts down my browser or doesn't display. That's where mobi steps in to promise ones visit will be mobile friendly.

As for your non-mobi sites (such as GPS)...how will surfers know it's mobile friendly? Are they supposed to guess or cross their fingers? I'm willing to bet few non-domainers out there have heard of .me...I'm not saying mobi is either...but it's got quite a jump on .me....The only way I can see is by you spending loads of cash to promote it as such. I'm not trying to disrespect you in any way. Just trying to see your logic.

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I think people just open a site in their mobile browser and see what happens. Unlimited bandwidth is the norm so people don't worry about that. If the site is mobile friendly the person notes it and returns to it if they like the content.


As far as promotion of a site. My ad budget is $0 so getting the word out about a site is a major problem for me. I rely on the search engines for traffic and sometimes it works out but many times it doesn't.

And, yes the .me is a major leap representing wishful thinking on my part.

miitree said:

However, I think the future is for the more conventional domains (.com, .me)

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for the most part i agree with your post, but .me huh???

also, the iphone still has very little overall penetration %, i'd watch building out specifically and only for it.

but good luck with your sites, own iteam.mobi and it might explain where some of the traffic comes from.

namewaiter said:

for the most part i agree with your post, but .me huh???

also, the iphone still has very little overall penetration %, i'd watch building out specifically and only for it.

but good luck with your sites, own iteam.mobi and it might explain where some of the traffic comes from.

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Thank you.

I noticed the Android simulator uses the same browser as the iPhone. I would imagine that real Android phones will use that same webkit (open source) browser.

Possibly the IUI programming style used by a lot of iPhone compatible sites will become a defacto web standard for upscale mobile devices.

Hi Miitree,
Great choice in getting GPA.ME, its short and easy to remember. Your website does have potential; this I can already tell. I have checked your site on both pc and mobile and kudos to your implementation of auto-detection.

However, I do have a few questions regarding your use of auto-detection. I know you said...

miitree said:

I have seen requests at a rate of about 3 per second continuous 24 hours a day. So rapid response is important to me.

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So that comes to about 259,200 requests per day or 7,776,000 requests per 30 days. Have you experienced any downtime on your servers due to this load? How much memory on your servers does the script actually need to process and how does multiple requests effect your website response? Do you have dedicated servers for this site? And how will greater content (as students start to develop their websites) affect your servers? What if most content is images, videos, etc. How will you handle this?

From further research, I noticed that your site still has no rank in both Google or Alexa, however to me this is understandable since .me is fairly new to the domain address game. Upon further searching I also found that Google has accessed multiple links from your site, but has yet to find much content. Once again, quite understandable since you are still getting the word out.

The questions I'm asking is not to discredit your website- I am legitimately interested in these questions, because I know that auto-detection can be a great utility but it can also cause major pains as your site becomes popular and well visited. Which is why I question the effectiveness of auto-detection as an end-solution.

mwzd said:

:D :D :D

The truth will set you free...

Everyone knows I'm a naysayer... so I'll let it rest.

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Everyone knows I'm a prosayer, but I am open-minded. If there is a compelling argument- I am always open to it...and your point?

no that is all my sites combined. satelliteviews.net has over 1 million pages indexed in google. itouchmap.com over 500k. I had to
move those 2sites to another server because of the indexing.

posted from my iPhone.

DBADT2007 said:

Hi Dbad...

So that comes to about 259,200 requests per day or 7,776,000 requests per 30 days. Have you experienced any downtime on your servers due to this load? How much memory on your servers does the script actually need to process and how does multiple requests effect your website response? Do you have dedicated servers for this site? And how will greater content (as students start to develop their websites) affect your servers? What if most content is images, videos, etc. How will you handle this?

From further research, I noticed that your site still has no rank in both Google or Alexa, however to me this is understandable since .me is fairly new to the domain address game. Upon further searching I also found that Google has accessed multiple links from your site, but has yet to find much content. Once again, quite understandable since you are still getting the word out.

The questions I'm asking is not to discredit your website- I am legitimately interested in these questions, because I know that auto-detection can be a great utility but it can also cause major pains as your site becomes popular and well visited. Which is why I question the effectiveness of auto-detection as an end-solution.

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I'm at a PC now so typing is a little easier...

The rate of 3 times a second is accurate.

To answer your questions, I write in PERL and most of my websites are dynamic, that is the page is built when a request comes in. So whether you format the response for a PC, iPhone, or other mobile device doesn't really matter. The check_browser routine I mentioned above is trivial. Also, I don't use PERL libraries if I can avoid them.

Satelliteviews.net has over 6 million different satellite views so you can do the math as to how long it takes to index a site of that size. The indexing of that site has been going on for at least a couple of years.

All of my sites were hosted at pair.com and I have been a customer of their's for about 8 years. Also, the sites run on a shared server. My sites lived in harmony for a long time until recently pair must have put an account on the server which consumed mucho processor. So when requests come in from SE's at the rate I mentioned they can build up quickly and I don't think Apache is great on BSD Unix when things start to bog down. Well response times got bad and pair thought my account was causing the problem. I don't think it was since it was OK for many, many months. I decided to move the two sites satelliteviews.net and iTouchmap.com to ICDsoft where they are living happily. I have noticed that ICSSoft servers deliver very consistent response times in the area of around 300-400 ms from request to response complete.

GPA.me is new so it is going to take some time for it to build an audience.

In summary auto-detection is not an issue for dynamically generated pages.

Thanks for asking. If you have any other questions I will do my best to answer them.

Regards,
Al

On "Market Penetration":

Whitebark/Roy - I question the quality of your "business degree". Traditional market penetration metrics, as in how many soda drinkers drink Coke, is not relevant for domain development/usage. It simply makes no sense if you think about it. Factors such as SE results which are partially and often not in the control of the mtld play a large role in how often a .mobi is used by the end user....for one of many obvious examples. I could go on and on.

A more appropriate measure would be a customer adoption curve. Equate the timeline and the sequence steps of visionaries/early adopters/early mainstream/ etc. to that of .net and .org. I don't have the data nor will I look for it, I'm just letting you and the other readers know that your snazzy market penetration metric is flawed at best. ....and yes, I too have a "business degree" - actually a couple....one in finance and a masters from a top B-school. Thanks for your input.


On the SE Rankings issue:

for the record, wazobi.mobi is on the first page of G for "best mobile sites" & the non-quote version.



What keeps me in .mobi? On a number of occasions I tried to get web info from my smart phone (modern BB) on the go....one time on a friend iPhone... I got some info from consumer reports after a tedious venture of finding the links and waiting for graphics to load....other times I was price comparison shopping while in a store getting ready to purchase. Its just tedious...time is precious in mobile web surfing. I dont want any graphics...I want data!!! For prices, there is no reason for very much graphics. More importantly, the navigation is different for every site - which is fine for desktop browsing.

This is all old news but in a nutshell I want a standard mobile web development format to make on-the-go browsing/research easy. I want this as a mobile web user, not a .mobi investor.

What is great is that it is out there and catching on...it is the .mobi philosophy.




MEGWELL