nombre

to me, one of the main values of .mobi will be browser defaults

if you type in flowers and it defaults to flowers.mobi then the guy who owns flowers.com is not too happy

if it defaults to flowers.com, different story for everyone

can anyone point me to the information/data that definitely says cellphone browsers from nokia, msft, all the major players will default to .mobi

i assume they will ..... otherwise .... anyone can make any .tld extension into a mobile site and the value will shift to the shortest type-in names

newton

Nope .. no one including .mobi, have come forward and said this WILL be the standard default, although they would like it to be

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nombre

i hate to throw water on the .mobi idea but unless the built-in cellphone browsers default to .mobi the whole thing may turn out to be a bust

wine.com takes 13 keystrokes ... wine.mobi takes 19

the guy who owns wine.com can implement code to recognize what kind of device is asking for his home page and then switch to the mobile browser version for cellphones OR the guy who owns wine.tv can create a mobile-only site

correct if i'm wrong

i HOPE i'm wrong, otherwise .mobi is toast

ANY domain name (dogpoo.ru etc) can be made perfectly mobile compliant

newton

ANY tld can be made to be mobile compliant, this is true, as to how many have done so in the past is sadly too few.

Keystrokes depends on the keypad and the phone as to whether it has qwerty or not.

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Broker

December 01, 2006
Mobile browser advances do not remove the the need for mobile

I hear this argument all the time: phones are becoming more capable all the time and already some high end phones can render existing desktop-focused sites without a problem. So why is a mobile-friendly site necessary?



The argument is true up to a point—some of the more recent smart phones (e.g. the Nokia N90 and N70 series) are being shipped with the Web Kit browser that can render normal desktop sites such as Amazon without any problems. However, there are 4 major problems with this approach:

These advanced phones represent a tiny percentage of the phones in use around the world. We should concern ourselves more with the ~2.5 billion other “normal” phones. Yes, these advanced cabilities will likely trickle down to other phones, but this will take a long time.
Phones will always be less capable than PCs due to the physical size limitations. You simply can’t fit a big screen and keyboard in a small phone. There will always be a capabilities gap, regardless of how good the phones get.
Just because you can visit a PC site on a phone, it doesn’t mean you necessarily want to. Mobile is different. Mobile browsing is much less about random surfing than it is about targetted, time & location-specific tasks. Experience has shown that you can’t simply miniaturize a site for mobile—to be truely mobile-friendly and useful, a site needs to be designed for mobile, not just squeezed into a smaller space. Some people argue that mobile should be considered another channel entirely, and that it is a mistake to think about it in the same way.
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/dot-mobi/273817-cellphone-browser-defaults-for-mobi.html
Viewing a PC site on a phone can be very expensive because of all the graphics that need to be downloaded. The cost issue alone is enough to make this unfeasible for many users. Example: the cnn.com homepage would cost as much as €7 to view on a phone based on some data plans in Europe.
To summarize, the advanced browsing capabilities of more recent phones are very nice to have, but do not really solve the core problems with mobile browsing.

Posted by Ronan Cremin on December 01, 2006 at 12:22 PM

nombre

HasRob

i agree with your points

however, that doesn't address the issue of the value of the .mobi tld

if any tld can be made mobile compliant (dogpoo.ru, flowers.tw, callgirls.us)

then what is the value of .mobi ??

if major cellphone browsers default to .mobi then yes, i see a real advantage (you just type in dogpoo and you go automatically to dogpoo.mobi)

if not i don't see a real advantage to .mobi

what am i missing?

yoyosean

it is all about standardization. if cellular cos know that their users experience is going to be quality at all times with .mobi than they will promote it as the preferred extension for publishers and users. It also helps to brand the mobile internet as a viable solution to end users, meaning that the end user knows that the .mobi extension is going to be made relevant to a mobile users needs, which are far different than a desktop users needs.

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nombre

yoyosean

good points standardization and predictability are necessary to build up trust with the end user

however, there is nothing magic about .mobi ... right ?

in fact if i come up with a shorter name for flowers.mobi (obviously one of the top ten keywords for a mobile user) like flowers.cc (at random) and i develop a following and people like the site and it's optimized for mobile content, it is actually quicker to type in (31 keystrokes vs 28) i can do just as well or better than flowers.mobi (i agree that it would require lot's of marketing whereas flowers.mobi would require almost no marketing)
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=273817

if on the other hand i can just type in flowers and hit enter and it defaults to flowers.mobi then the game is up, there would be very little point in seriously developing a mobile site that doesn't have the .mobi extension

one final thing and then i'll shut up, you can play all kinds of endless games with a non-qwert phone keypad for web addresses using numbers easy type-ins etc, much of which would shortcircuit the value of mobi, if .mobi is not the default broswer choice

Broker

Theres no need for keystrokes with the majority of cell phone users browsing the web via there phones having the better quality phones. Keystrokes on cell phones will be a thing of the past in a few years with everything listed under favorites anyway. One click and wala.
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=273817

Also, I'm trying to figure out why some of the major companys have developed the .mobi sites and others like google have not.

Example, google.mobi takes you to..

http://www.google.com/m/products

From there they have..

www.mobilegoogle.com
www.google.com/mobile/

I think its safe to say, google.mobi is their anwser no?

yoyosean

yes,

anybody can market their tld as a mobile tld and push standardization, etc. the fact is that nobody is or was, therefore .mobi saw a niche market and decided to exploit it.
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=273817

i guess saying that they have no value would be the same thing as saying, well there is already a ralphs grocery store so there is no reason to have a vons.

the bottom line is the .mobi folks thought of a smart way to make sure that users experience on their handhelds was guaranteed to be good, thus far creating a reason for themselves to exist in the highly competitive tld market and the fact that the only extension that they are really going to have to compete with is of course the big daddy .com. That being said if mobile users demand their content to be more relevant, less loading times and cheaper as their mobile experience and the consumers know they can get this with .mobi then it will be the end user who decides to use .mobi on their cel phones and pda's, that is why marketing will be so important for this tld to become as relevant in the consumers mind as possible.

then it is the consumer demanding .mobi and what the consumer demands whether it is necessary or not it becomes a brand and once you are branded you are golden!

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nombre

i follow you completely .... it will be about branding, if the .mobi people can convey to the user that .mobi sites are THE sites to go to from their cellphones then it will succeed ...

-it is also possible that if the .mobi revolution starts to happen, it will end up on the cover of TIME and everyone who has a web site will start to think "wow i gotta get me one of them .mobi sites!" and when they go looking they will see that a lot are gone and many may decide to either pay big bucks to buy one (the version that everyone here is hoping for!) or ... they may just use their current domain like the flowers.com guy might not be the guy who bought flowers.mobi, so he will just re-orient his site by using code to shift users to mobile version of his site or the regular version depending on what device is accessing the site
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=273817

a very large factor is how successful .mobi sites are going to be is whether the built-in browser defaults to a.mobi extension much as some browsers (firefox) will default to .com when you enter it in the address bar

i have to assume that the guys (nkia. msft et all) who pushed for .mobi are going to do this because it will make .mobi the easiest domain to enter (most of the time anyway ... obviously the who has 12.com is going to better off than the guy who has rottentomatoes.mobi) i hope i am making sense here

and no doubt bookmarking will be very important on cell browsers, if you really like a site you're gonna bookmark it

scandiman

the dotmobi folks have done a very good thing by using an RFP process for some of their premium names to ensure useful content for the public. Until the content exists there is no point in marketing the tld to the public. I think in a few years it will be a nice convergence of content, mobile ecommerce solutions independent of the carriers, better devices, faster connections and cheaper airtime.

runsome

I will try to make this as clear as possible, I come across this issue all the time regarding "why use .mobi when a .com can do the same thing"? Its the recognition that .mobi will work with your phone. Here's an example:

If you show someone
212-555-5555 and 212-555-5555.com, you automatically know that one is likley a telephone number and the other is a website. My point is is that once you see the .com you know you can access the .com address via the internet. dotmobi is trying to do just that when you see 212-555-5555.mobi you will know it is a mobile compliant website.

Sure you can make a mobile site on a .com, but there are currently so many .com sites that aren't mobile comliant (probably 99%) that it makes visiting a website from a mobile device a game of hit or miss. Try going to ebay.com with your cellphone. Depending on your phone, you may not be able to download the whole main page after minutes of waiting.
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=273817

Like I have said in the past, I have been using the internet on my cellphone for over 2 years now and I love the idea of having an extension that I know will be compatible with mobile browsing. If I see it, I know it's mobile friendly

Hopefully, it will take off like intended. The big companies are buying these names for a reason. Cingular tried to trademark music.mobi and video.mobi for a reason. 1800flowers.com was trying to buy flowers.mobi for a reason. etc...

.mobi has landed, now we have to wait for the invasion.

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nombre

runsome, helpful response and trust me, i completely get your point, no doubt if you are using a cellphone to access the web, you do not want to dick around and try 5 sites to get something that has what you need (flowers,taxi's,hookers, whatever) i do get it ... a .mobi tells you that the site is mobile compliant and you won't be wasting your time (at least in terms of readability ... quality of content is another story)

presumably all the companies that might conceivably have a mobile accessible product have all gotten their respective .mobi's in the pre-public period and will serve 2 sites a .com site and .mobi site

those that have'nt will presumably buy an existing good .mobi name or in some cases just stick with their .com name and use technology to serve the appropriate site depending on the users platform

so, i still think it is critical to know whether phone browsers default to .mobi for web addresses entered in the address bar ... i have to assume they will because the big phone makers are all backing the .mobi domain so strongly

mejcdj

That we have strict guidelines to follow for .mobi. They 'require' certiain codes and restrictions to be followed to the 'T'. They are holding the very best names to be purchased by serious developers. This makes the 'empty parking page' almost disappear for .mobi sites.

As some one mentioned here on another thread, there are thousands of premium names that are parked and offer only PPC adverts. No real content that relates to what you were looking for when you typed in the name. Its frustrating to sift thru endless circles and mazes of links and ads and forwards to get some simple information on the subject you are searching. With .mobi, that should be kept at a minimum. There will still be a few parked here and there, but the whole idea of .mobi is DEVELOP DEVELOP DEVELOP. Less park pages and empty searches will give .mobi the consumer's trust and it will succeed. If for no other reason, actual relavent content with mobile phone ready sites will make it happen.
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=273817

Keep in mind, we are still just a few short months into the .mobi era, and registrations are still fresh. I agree that some time in 2007 .mobi will become major news and have enough sites developed and online to support what we all feel will be a new wave of mobile ecommerce and web use.

JMO

Mejcdj

nombre

right, i think after years of frustration of not having the web work well from cellphones the .mobi group has tried to kick it up a notch by create it's own domain extension

it's a good try and whether it works remains to be seen .. no one has yet answered my original question and i think it's a key question:

has anyone seen or heard data on whether the phones from the .mobi group will default to the .mobi extension ?

one of their standards is the you must structure you web server so that you don't need to type in www. you _must_ do that or your site will be taken down

it would be totally logical that the .mobi group would also set all cell-phone browsers to default to .mobi for the address

it may seem like a small point but i think it will have a huge effect on the success of .mobi

if they set the browser default to .mobi and you want to do business with cell users ... you better get a .mobi extension, period

and needless to say all the members of this forum would agree completely

scandiman

I have not heard any such commitment, but it may not matter if users have the choice of phone browser which could have such a setting. I expect the carriers will be more of an obstacle than the phone makers. In their ideal world they would own the content and the customer and not be marginalized into the commodity position of ISP.

yoyosean

i heard that cingular's newest phones were defaulting to .mobi, not sure if it is a rumor or not. the carriers will try to own the content that matters but they cannot own all of the content, they need to stick to their core competency, and partner with content providers, that is why they are backing the .mobi ext.

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thinking1

Who did you hear this from? Where? I read so many Mobi forums and look for Mobi news every day and haven't heard anything about this.
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=273817

I would really like to know because if this is true the value of my Mobi names just skyrocketed.

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Power Metal
Studio City

newton

I found this from May 2006 and would be interesting to see if there is any updates on this or comments from the dot mobi team ..

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=31507

Edwards also claimed that consumers won't necessarily have to key in the actual characters - .mobi - when visiting a site. That's because browsers from Access, Nokia and Openwave will automatically default to assuming that the user wants the .mobi domain, not the .com site.

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nombre

thinking1 ... right ... this is why i am making so many posts about this issue ...... browser default is f^^%$^ critical to .mobi ....if phone browsers are set to default to .mobi then everyone on this forum is making a lot more money ...if they are not set to default to .mobi then things are a little more tricky as far as our investments

thinking1

True, browser defaulting to MOBI would be fantastic. But it isn't necessary to the success of the extension. As long as people know when they type in .mobi into their cell phones that a website will be there then they are golden.
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=273817

For instance, my computer HP computer at home doesn't default to anything. It gives me an error page if I don't add an extension. But, I know if I want to go to a valid website I must add a .com to whatever I'm typing in (or just use a search engine).

So defaulting to mobi isn't necessary, but I REALLY HOPE IT HAPPENS!!!! Because it will definitely be the quickest and easiest way for MOBI to be successful.

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Power Metal
Studio City

mejcdj

Regarding the .mobi extension being default or not, I found the old transcript of the chat with pinky.
Take a look :

http://www.namepros.com/dot-mobi/263...d-dotmobi.html

Mejcdj

thinking1

That touched up on it but it basically left us with no clear answer. MOBI is trying to make the mobi extension a default for cellular browsers but there is no word yet on it if has succeeded with having future phones default to it.

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Power Metal
Studio City

RJ

Is it a catch-22 that people are waiting for .MOBI to be a cellphone default before wanting to invest and develop in .MOBI?

There won't be a .MOBI default until there are enough good .MOBI sites to make it worthwhile. mTLD doesn't give a timeline for this, but I'm guessing at least 2 years before we see anything like that.

In the meantime, more likely is a .MOBI-only search engine or directory, similar to what www.kids.us is for that TLD.

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