I'm happy to post that .mobi has bought Mowser and is adding the invaluable (Mowser) human resources to the .mobi team. I couldn't agree more with the opening line... (and the following rationale aint bad either):
"At long last we can announce some great news! dotMobi is acquiring the well-known Mowser service that provides content adaptation services for mobile.
We're very excited about this. Russell Beattie and Mike Rowehl are both very talented mobile gurus and they'll be joining the dotMobi team to help us do cool things with their technology. We did this deal because Mowser fits really well into lots of our current projects. Firstly, the Mowser directory, search and listings will be integrated straight into our newly launched find.mobi service. Secondly, the mobile formatting technology will help us provide more ways in which you can use DeviceAtlas for creating device-adapted content. And finally, we want to be able to help people mobilise legacy web sites so they can quickly dip their toes into the burgeoning world of the mobile web."
its quite simple really... this registry is very involved in the mobile internet world in general.... not just exclusively with their .mobi TLD.
when you start to associate yourself with the mobile web in general and you're pushing a TLD at the same time, watch out... this is the way products become known/popularized.
__________________ Quote: Originally Posted by dominator and wtf is mobile campain? who needs it anyway?- July 29th, 2008.
i see it as just a way to help control and direct the market .... i still believe using .mobi is the simplest way to establish yourself on the mobile web - no browsers to download, no special software to install on your device.
when i browse the web on my dash, i regularly visit .mobi sites and mobile specific sites, but when a link leads me to a pc based site the experience sucks .... long time to download, wrong fromats, scrolling - i usually find myself hitting the back button before sites completely download.
Last week, a despondent Beattie broke the news and gave an honest assessment of the "market". It's a must-read if you've followed the mobile business.
Beattie says most of the hype about mobile browsing has been misplaced, for several reasons. Firstly, futurists and other pundits forget that what succeeds in Asia doesn't necessarily work in the West:
"I don't actually believe in the 'mobile web' anymore," he wrote. "And therefore am less inclined to spend time and effort in a market I think is limited at best, and dying at worst. I'm talking specifically about sites that are geared 100 per cent towards mobile phones and have little to no PC web presence......
and from another source:
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Mowser founders Russell Beattie and Michael Rowehl will serve as consultants “for a few months,” according to a post on Beattie’s blog.
Just because someone picked a bad business model doesn't mean the mobile internet is dead. People don't click on my dot com site ads, does this mean dot com is dead? That is just ridiculous reasoning.
This is the same position a lot of domainers are in, .mobi or otherwise. If you are dependent on advertising as your only source of revenue, you're in the media ad space sales business. If, on the other hand, you have an actual product to sell, and your site supports the sales of that product, your site is no longer an ad sales site but rather a marketing tool to support the sale of your primary product.
Russell and Mike were in the ad sales business with mowser. dotMobi is in the domain name registration business, and when people see how they can use the mowser tool *in support* of building a mobile website, dotMobi's revenue will increase because people will "buy" (lease, actually) more .mobi domain names.
It's a simple matter of having the right tool for the right job, and now mowser is going to be used for the right job.
dotMobi Buys Mowser!!! 
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