.mobi .sucks .eggs

By on October 2, 2006 in News

Why oh WHY anyone in their RIGHT MIND thought ‘.mobi’ was better than ‘.mob’ (if we’re having to have separate extensions), I don’t know.

I think .xxx is a great idea. Insist all adult sites run from .xxx and then you’ve a sure fire way of keeping children away from the web’s smut.

I hope we’ve got a .pda extension coming for all us PDA users? ;-) Only, that should be .pdaZ just to make it that bit more annoying to use.

There should definitely be a .blackb extension for Blackberries.

While we’re at it, could someone please submit an application for domain extensions for refrigerators, kettles, cars, ipods and betamax video recorders? Ah, and also an extension for when I’m camping and viewing webpages on my Apple laptop in the outdoors.

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  • http://wampad.com Shawn McCollum

    I’d be more likely to use .mp for a mobile domain but the cost is $300. It’s also a bit weird in how their pushing it, but after seeing $300 my interest quickly went away. I’m really quite happy with .com and after blogs like engadget turned on auto detect for their mobile version, I just wonder why a mobile domain is really needed

    I think that mobi was used because it was dreamed up by business people and marketers. dot mob just doesn’t carry the marketing message that it’s for phones where mobi sounds close.

    I did buy one for my site for protection, i’m just hoping that it becomes pointless in two years so I don’t have give any more money to this racket. Plus I’m worried that mobi will become a large walled garden

  • http://invalid.name Dan Lane

    Like Shawn we bought our .mobi for protection. IMHO it’s a waste of time.

    The most obvious lack of forethought (for me, at least) is that the TLD is designed for mobile devices… I’d say that around 99% of these devices have touchtone style keypads. Now assuming I don’t like predictive text (in fact, I hate it) I have to press: 666622444 to type MOBI… I probably have to wait or press *, # or 0 after the first 6 to get the curser to let me type the next character since M and O both share the 6 key.

    I can’t think of a better TLD for mobile devices because mobile devices DON’T NEED a TLD, especially not one that’s longer than the current mainstream TLDs.

  • http://blog.mobi Vance Hedderel, Director, PR and Communications, dotMobi

    I’m always surprised by the vehemence people express in regards to the perceived effort in typing “.mobi”; I suspect you will start to see mobiles with “.mobi” programmed in the interface, so the typing issue — if it is an issue — becomes moot.

    However, in the comments above, I’m more surprised by Shawn McCollum’s comment that he’s “worried that mobi will become a large walled garden.”

    We’ve talked about this on in our blog’s “Misconceptions” series (see http://dotmobi.typepad.com/dotmobi/misconceptions/index.html). The short answer: (1) the freeform address entry required to enter a .mobi URL is the antithesis of a walled garden, (2) the business model of a walled garden of content and services has not worked (think AOL) and (3) of the 13 investors in mTLD, only three are mobile operators — the rest are device manufacturers, service operators and software companies, none of whom stand to gain from a walled garden.

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