.mobi Afilias Acquires .Mobi

I would love to here what people at NP think of this news

I would think this is good news. I know quite a few are unhappy with the previous promotion of the extension. We will have to wait and see what they do but I gotta figure promotion of some sort is on the table or else I don't think they would have bought it.

I think its good news as well, Afilias has more experience, connections and resources.

mitch007 said:

wrong thread- please delete

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so this news made ya start a mobi sales thread, should we bail on our .mobis

SpareDomains said:

so this news made ya start a mobi sales thread, should we bail on our .mobis

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so hey, what really happened with that supposed $130,000 sportsbook.mobi sale.... 4 years later and it seems prettttttttttty fishy.

Personally I think the news of Google, Microsoft, Vodafone, Samsung, etc selling out and Affilias buying in is moderately negative for the extension, in terms of it now being clear to all that it is going to be small time. Not that those companies ever did anything for the extension but it is more of a symbolic thing.

After all this what is the compelling reason for speculating in .mobi? With the backers out of the picture, little support for the extension and prices that are now down 90%+ all the reasons people used to make for buying domain in this extension have faded away.

snoop said:

After all this what is the compelling reason for speculating in .mobi? With the backers out of the picture, little support for the extension and prices that are now down 90%+ all the reasons people used to make for buying domain in this extension have faded away.

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the backers never really were a compelling reason for me... neither was anything mTLD ever said i just mostly tuned it out. thats why it was important to hedge your bets early on and not have thousands upon thousands invested in something once the hype phase ended.

mjnels said:

the backers never really were a compelling reason for me... neither was anything mTLD ever said i just mostly tuned it out. thats why it was important to hedge your bets early on and not have thousands upon thousands invested in something once the hype phase ended.

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Quoted for Truth

mjnels said:

the backers never really were a compelling reason for me... neither was anything mTLD ever said i just mostly tuned it out. thats why it was important to hedge your bets early on and not have thousands upon thousands invested in something once the hype phase ended.

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Agree about hedging your bets, I think you've done well exiting from alot of names when you did.

Regarding the backers I think it probably was the main selling point for the extension.

still have over 100 .mobi's but thats even more than i had at landrush.. although i didnt make much money playing this speculation game so far... low $xx,xxx...

about the backers, yeah i agree that was a major contributing factor for domainers on this and other forums spending their money on .mobi "lottery tickets"... i never understood completely why some people took them at their word but a lot of these people have seemingly switched from being pure domainers to saying "development is the future" and similar statements... but when has development not been the future with any TLD? we will soon see the people who were actually serious about these statements and the people that uttered them out of desperation and flailing in the wind.. changing strategy is not necessarily a bad thing but real development takes lots of time and energy, not just throwing up some compatible site and hoping for the best... something that will fail 99.5% of the time.

as far as speculating in this market, i dont see any reason to do so in it's current state or even the past year.

mjnels said:

we will soon see the people who were actually serious about these statements and the people that uttered them out of desperation and flailing in the wind.. changing strategy is not necessarily a bad thing but real development takes lots of time and energy, not just throwing up some compatible site and hoping for the best... something that will fail 99.5% of the time.

as far as speculating in this market, i dont see any reason to do so in it's current state or even the past year.

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Agree. It is a heck of a lot of work to build up even one moderately successful site. The attempted move from domaining to development that we seem to be seeing alot of right now is typically done out of last resort more than anything else. Have seen alot of this from other tlds aswell. It is a real "the grass is greener on the other side" point of view.

As an example people will often say "I've dropped 90% of my names to focus on development", what it really means is they have dropped 90% of their names already and the other 10% will be dropped in coming years.

a small percentage of people will actually be able to make it work, but most likely have previous development experience or are really willing and interested to learn. my view is if you arnt really interested you will fail a good portion of the time. personally not interested enough to make it succeed right now.. it is interesting to me.. but i know once you start you will see how easily the herd thins.

mjnels said:

a small percentage of people will actually be able to make it work, but most likely have previous development experience or are really willing and interested to learn. my view is if you arnt really interested you will fail a good portion of the time. personally not interested enough to make it succeed right now.. it is interesting to me.. but i know once you start you will see how easily the herd thins.

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Agree, will be a small % that find success. I'm in the same the boat, not really interested in development - well I am to some degree, but not enough to seriously commit to spending hours each day over many years which I think it what it really takes.

Nothing will help .mobi
Specialy when .tel is groving rapidly and more and more sites are being populated and new futures added to it all the time.
You can add adds to your site now and next month they are adding Google adsense to it and few other futures so .mobi has no chance of surviving

No .tel in this thread, please

metropol said:

Nothing will help .mobi
Specialy when .tel is groving rapidly and more and more sites are being populated and new futures added to it all the time.
You can add adds to your site now and next month they are adding Google adsense to it and few other futures so .mobi has no chance of surviving

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metropol said:

Nothing will help .mobi
Specialy when .tel is groving rapidly and more and more sites are being populated and new futures added to it all the time.
You can add adds to your site now and next month they are adding Google adsense to it and few other futures so .mobi has no chance of surviving

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i see used car salesman in your future.

Looks like the registry was not healthy, perhaps it was sold because the backers weren't willing to put in any more money? It sounds like .mobi had maybe 6 months left going by that "burn rate".

Financial records for mTLD filed at Ireland’s Companies Registration Office indicated that in 2009 mTLD had a loss of €3.5 million on a turnover of €6.4 million, compared to a loss of €324,000 the year before on turnover of €9 million. Total assets less liabilities (eg money owed to creditors) in 2009 was €1.7 million.

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DotMobi Sells .Mobi Domain-Name Operator | paidContent:UK

DotMobi was trying to please 14 masters, the backers, who were, except for Nokia, not interested in the extension. These backers caused DotMobi to spend a lot of money on side projects that benefited the parent companies and not Mobi. So the registry itself was probably doing OK, many registrys make a profit with less than 900,000 domains.

Afilias is not known for doing much marketing of it's extensions, but Mobi is, perhaps, a special case. The Mobi registry has been quite an innovator in marketing the extension, and the potential of the mobile web is still largely ahead of us. I am sure the Afilias people would prefer to have 10 million registrations and that is, IMHO a reasonable goal.

The reason to buy Mobi names now is that really good keywords are available cheaply. The hype has been wrung from the market, the nervous have split the scene, and the spoils are there for the carpetbaggers.

There will be a use for Mobi names - many websites want to be identified with the mobile market. Purchase by Afilias means the extension will not be abandoned and will be available at all the registrars. Utter doom has been avoided. Now the question is: where does Mobi fit on the extension valuation chart. I believe by current use it is around the Info level, reasonable potential to the Org level. Current Mobi domain prices are far below that. That spells opportunity.

metropol said:

specialy when .tel is groving rapidly and more and more sites are being populated and new futures added to it all the time.

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lol

accentnepal said:

Afilias is not known for doing much marketing of it's extensions, but Mobi is, perhaps, a special case. The Mobi registry has been quite an innovator in marketing the extension, and the potential of the mobile web is still largely ahead of us. I am sure the Afilias people would prefer to have 10 million registrations and that is, IMHO a reasonable goal.

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I think you'll be in store for a surprise then if you think .mobi will be a special case.

.mobi was obviously months away from having no money left due to overblown expenses so you can expect far less to be spent marketing it, not more. Expect alot of cutbacks on advertising, staff, travel etc. Clearly shooting for 10million reges isn't realistic. Maintaining current reges whilst getting it profitable is probably more likely to be the goal.

accentnepal said:

DotMobi was trying to please 14 masters, the backers, who were, except for Nokia, not interested in the extension. These backers caused DotMobi to spend a lot of money on side projects that benefited the parent companies and not Mobi. So the registry itself was probably doing OK, many registrys make a profit with less than 900,000 domains.

Afilias is not known for doing much marketing of it's extensions, but Mobi is, perhaps, a special case. The Mobi registry has been quite an innovator in marketing the extension, and the potential of the mobile web is still largely ahead of us. I am sure the Afilias people would prefer to have 10 million registrations and that is, IMHO a reasonable goal.

The reason to buy Mobi names now is that really good keywords are available cheaply. The hype has been wrung from the market, the nervous have split the scene, and the spoils are there for the carpetbaggers.

There will be a use for Mobi names - many websites want to be identified with the mobile market. Purchase by Afilias means the extension will not be abandoned and will be available at all the registrars. Utter doom has been avoided. Now the question is: where does Mobi fit on the extension valuation chart. I believe by current use it is around the Info level, reasonable potential to the Org level. Current Mobi domain prices are far below that. That spells opportunity.

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That's the first admission I have seen ( by a .mobi supporter ? ) that the extension was indeed on its last legs.
Turn the clock back a couple of years, and it seems that member ( Jeff / Retired ) was right all along.

snoop said:

I think you'll be in store for a surprise then if you think .mobi will be a special case.

.mobi was obviously months away from having no money left due to overblown expenses so you can expect far less to be spent marketing it, not more. Expect alot of cutbacks on advertising, staff, travel etc. Clearly shooting for 10million reges isn't realistic. Maintaining current reges whilst getting it profitable is probably more likely to be the goal.

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Snoop ... Do you expect to see the same scenario repeated for all other

tlds ? ... example .me ... etc ?

exsedo said:

That's the first admission I have seen ( by a .mobi supporter ? ) that the extension was indeed on its last legs.
Turn the clock back a couple of years, and it seems that member ( Jeff / Retired ) was right all along.

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I certainly am a Mobi supporter, but I don't see where I was saying Mobi was on it's last legs. The overall company, DotMobi, clearly needed more cash or it was done. The domain registration part was undoubtedly profitable, but DotMobi recently was calling itself a software company that had a domain extension as one of it's projects. I said I thought the backers were causing the registry to spend money on things unrelated to selling domains. That can happen when a tiny company is controlled by 14 giants.

Snoop said:

I think you'll be in store for a surprise then if you think .mobi will be a special case.

.mobi was obviously months away from having no money left due to overblown expenses so you can expect far less to be spent marketing it, not more. Expect alot of cutbacks on advertising, staff, travel etc. Clearly shooting for 10million reges isn't realistic. Maintaining current reges whilst getting it profitable is probably more likely to be the goal.

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It is usual when one company buys another to trim the dead wood, and DotMobi probably has a lot of that. Perhaps approaching Government agency level {shudder}.

An Afiflas rep wrote on Frager's blog that they (Afilias) were seeing this as a move on the Mobile web, and I am sure they know how quickly that market is developing. A Mobi rep wrote on M that prospects will be better with Afilias (he's the PR guy, wadda you expect) but more importantly said that marketing plans were being formulated - as if that is a detailed process. The staff at DotMobi has been very innovative in promoting the extension on a small budget, I hope that can continue. There is still a large opportunity for Mobi, without the pressures of 14 owners with vastly differing objectives they may be able to do a lot more with less.

A ten-fold increase in registrations is not too difficult in a rapidly developing market.
You just get out in front of it and ride :wave:.

I must have misunderstood your post, my comment was based on this :-


" Purchase by Afilias means the extension will not be abandoned and will be available at all the registrars. Utter doom has been avoided."