I believe there are some people who want to help, and there are others who are happy with their .com's and want to stick an m. in front of them and not have to re-buy all of their names in .mobi (if they even could) and then hire designers to redevelop. It's hitting .com owners in the pocketbook and they don't like it, so rather than front all that money they would rather knock down the tld and try to cause it to fail.
Most of us .com owners certainly don't want to re-purchase all our .coms in .mobi in preparation for the mobile web, that's for sure!
That's where part of the problem lies and it's also why some very well respected figures like Tim Berners-Lee oppose .mobi...
I'd love to build a mobile version of my BQB.com, but I'm not going to pay thousands for the .mobi just because the domainer/owner realizes I own the .com, and I'm sure many corporations out there today feel the same way as me -- they'll opt for an m-dot or /mobile not necessarily because they don't believe .mobi has promise, but rather because they're 100% uninterested in spending thousands of dollars (money they perhaps cannot afford to spend) on a domain name when they already have one.
Whether .com owners convert to .mobi or not is irrelevant to me. It is really about all the future companies and individuals who do not yet have a great .com to make mobile. This is where mobi will stretch its legs and gain huge momentum. If you don't have the .com to format to m. and can't afford it, mobi is the logical choice for a mobile sight. Not to mention much cheaper...for now!
I do however see .com owners being worried about lost traffic in the future. Imagine if you own food.com but do not have the mobi. Anyone "on the go" using food.mobi is taking away from food.com. I would use the mobi to fill my immediate needs and discard the pc version (if I was away from home). That's going to hurt bigtime players in .com.
On a side note. The other day I was watching "The Paper", a show on MTV involving high school students. The girl was at home yet chose to use her mobile to access the internet instead of her pc. IMHO this will become the norm in the near future. It's about convenience in the end
The internet is very young and could turn a new corner at any time. Lets not assume the game is over and there will be no more development. We're just getting started and the world of possibilities are endless. The mobile web, in due time, will be huge!!
but this is exactly where .mobi domains also represent an area to expand a brand or introduce a new one.
ok so you own bqb.com ... a place to sell short domains. maybe you won't get bqb.mobi, but wouldn't domains.mobi or domainnames.mobi or names.mobi or auctions.mobi or buyselltrade.mobi etc. etc. compliment and work splendidly as your mobile domain alternative? couldn't owning and using a name like this also truly expand your brand into a potentially whole new revenue stream?
for every books.com there are thousands of book websites that don't have very good domains as their home address ... for them .mobi could be a way to help them differentiate themselves with a killer 'books' type .mobi. and this goes for most every industry and niche market there is.
IMO, I don't think .com owners will ever be worried about lost traffic in the future from .mobi. I don't see any figures, patterns, trends or other data that remotely supports this or indicates that this will happen.
1) Most people don't know about .mobi
2) .mobi ecosystem is polluted with .mobi sites that are not mobile device friendly, thus taking away the needed trust of .mobi = mobile from people, (mLTD should enforce their rules better) and parked .mobi sites
3) New phone/new browser technology (Ever improving)
4) Low cost data plan
5) People will most likely go to established sites that they frequently visit on PC (that's what I do on my HTC Touch)
I think in time if there are more and more well developed .mobi sites and with mTLD cleaning up .mobi ecosystem by enforcing their rules, .mobi and its purpose may become well known to general net users.
Best wishes.
There are 2 important things to bear in mind about .mobi;
1) From a technical angle, .mobi is irrelevant. If you want a separate desktop and cut down mobile version of your .com, set up a 2 style sheets. CSS has been around for years.
2) As a natural Internet extension and brand .mobi is awful. If you put in allinurl: mobi.com into a Google search you get about 64,000 indexed sites. Replace the mobi with net, info, .org, or .tv and you get 9.3m, 5.9m, 1.4m, and 18.9m respectively.
What this shows is that developers do not think the 4 letter bastardisation of the word mobile adds anything to their url. .mobi was very cleverly marketed and talked up by a handful of influential domainers but it's a busted flush.
It's not about the stats now. It's about the trends and stats
of the future that should worry .com owners. Mobile internet
is clearly a trend of the future and along with it will be new companies,
websites, domainers...that cannot be disputed.
It is a slow process that will evolve into something massive! Sort of
like the traditional web. It's taken years and years to become what
it is today. The mobile web is no different.
I agree. I have no doubt mobile web usage is growing (more and more mobile website ads seen in subways and in plazas).
I hope .mobi usages and the need grow substantially along with it.
Of course any site can be formatted to be viewed on a mobile device. The question is, will every .com, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .it, etc. be mobile friendly? Percentagewise, how many people are going to spend their limited time and patience wondering if the site will require horizontal navigation to read it? True, future phone browsers will probably solve that eventually, but in the meantime, .mobi sites that play by the rules will resolve on mobile phones and the ones that don't are going to find themselves penalized in some way. Mobile is it's stated intention, and that is why companies like Vodaphone UK and Sprint PCS in the US automatically whitelist .mobi sites from transcoding that mucks up viewing .com mobile sites.
Just reading the last page or two of posts in this thread is really encouraging. It seems that .MOBI is maturing to the point where it's true place in the market is become clearer to everyone.
love the namepros.mobi....really helps and doing posts...i am probably the number 1 namepros member using namepros.mobi and heavy user lol
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forexexchange.tv is now on sedo auction https://sedo.com/auction/auction_detail.php?tracked=&partnerid=&language=us&auction_id=40346
I've posted a link to this before; it's not exactly definitive proof as to why dotmobi has potential but it does allude to why those of us who are looking at the future with dotmobi in mind are doing so....
There are loads of anecdotal reports / views etc as to what the future may hold.... & a new kind of mobilenet is certainly something I think will unfold; rather than ask why? ask why not? (look how big text / SMS are despite email being accessible to everyone with a smart phone!!!)
.mobi has always reminded me of how .org used to be viewed -- people registered a .org to indicate they were an organization (usually non-profit), people will register a .mobi to indicate their site is mobile.
It's nice to see balanced opinions in this thread and I agree with many of you -- what remains to be seen is what level of adoption we'll see among new startup businesses and these guys will be the ones deciding how .mobi plays out imho.
I'm content with how things are going so far and will continue to renew my .mobis until I get around to developing them. I want to develop a "mobile health network" at some point, but I feel it's still a bit too early to outlay so much cash on the mobile web for people like me who would like a near-immediate ROI when it's still years away from primetime. As barriers to entry come crashing down, I do think we'll see .mobi make a nice little niche for itself and imho still has the potential to one day have recognizability comparable to .org (which imho is better than .net).
I agree, RJ, that it's nice to see folks express themselves, without much rancor
I feel "mobi" is maturing and will find a niche in the domain world --- or at least, I hope ... but I can also understand the frustration of major doctcomers who do not like the idea of paying premium dollars to acquire concomitant mobi domains ----
I hope we will find a way to work together --- dotmobi and dotcom w/out all the past vitriol and rancor ---- dotcom will always be king; we just hope dotmobi gets to be in the court ----
so your point is that Reece should advertise Bqb.com as the main site, and BuySellTrade.mobi as the mobile site?
A brand name is a brand name. Period. It cannot go by any other name just because it happens to be on another medium.
Just as your name would remain your name across the planet, your brand name would have to remain your brand name, across all mediums.
So yes, Reece is right that not all companies would be willing to shell out x,xxx or xx,xxx for buying the equivalent .mobis. For new players who do not own the .com, and are focused on mobile content, .mobi is fine. Not so for owners of established .com sites
