Following the success of their first auction in September 2007, mobile domain name registrar dotMobi are having another auction, kicking off tomorrow (31st October 2007).
Amongst the 100 “premium names” in the auction are such gems as car.mobi, gps.mobi, gay.mobi, kiss.mobi, love.mobi and map.mobi. If the first auction is anything to go by, the stakes will be high – back in September hosting.mobi sold for $101,000 plus bank.mobi and download.mobi both sold for more than $50,000 apiece.
“The success of our first online auction generated more than $850,000, proving that the market is seeing a strong demand for mobile content. Already, more than 7.5 million pages of .mobi content have been created, many of them using tools that dotMobi makes available for free like http://ready.mobi/ and http://site.mobi/,” said Trey Harvin, CEO of dotMobi. “The auction proceeds allow dotMobi to make tools like these available to encourage the growth of the mobile web.”
Tim Schumacher, CEO of Sedo, said, “dotMobi’s premium names are specifically designed for brands wanting to reach a mobile audience The success of dotMobi’s first auction showed that there is a strong market demand for the mobile web in general and for .mobi names specifically. Additionally, the auction approach of making these premium .mobi domains available for ownership gives countless people and brands an equal opportunity to secure these most desirable domains.”
The auction – handled by domain specialists Sedo – is open to any company or individual, subject to Sedo’s standard auction terms and conditions with additional dotMobi requirements for buyers. Full information, including the list of auction names, is located on the dotMobi web site at http://premiumauction.mobi/.
What about?
“I’d-rather-use-m.mobi”
See: m.jaiku, m.youtube, m.facebook
*sigh*
I still think this is all just a money making exercise thats totally pointless. Just another thing thats forced down peoples necks to remember and developers pay for.
$850,000 raised, well done to them for not a lot of work done….
There are more than 80,000,000 .com / .net / .org sites but only 0.03% are mobile friendly. Since a complete lack of URL convention has hurt mobile web discovery, we need a convention … but not all conventions are created equal. Unlike m.site.com or site.com/m, etc., enforceable standards ensure a .mobi site works on a mobile and represents a brand as it wants to be seen. In short, .mobi is designed to indicate a trustworthy mobile experience. (Not the only experience, of course, but a trustworthy one.)
And by the way, it turns out that it’s the same number of keypresses to enter m.domain.com as it is to enter domain.mobi.
As for “$850,000 raised, well done to them for not a lot of work done …” I think the users of http://ready.mobi, http://site.mobi and http://dev.mobi would disagree. These resources are made free to the mobile developer community … and we’ve been able to do so by using auction proceeds like these.
“And by the way, it turns out that it’s the same number of keypresses to enter m.domain.com as it is to enter domain.mobi.”
Then why should people bother to shell out for a .mobi domain?
Because “Unlike m.site.com or site.com/m, etc., enforceable standards ensure a .mobi site works on a mobile and represents a brand as it wants to be seen.”?
Enforceable standards… like those enforced on flowers.mobi?
Vance,
Going on what you are saying… ” In short, .mobi is designed to indicate a trustworthy mobile experience. (Not the only experience, of course, but a trustworthy one.)”
What has a .mobi extension got to do with being trustworthy? I think that’s not a valid argument for added expense to the developer (by that I mean company).
I just don’t see the point in having yet another layer of complication for the user to remember. Everyone remembers .Com but people struggle with .Net and .Org.
I think that the mobile web should be inclusive and not put barriers in front of people just for the sake of it.
With processes like WURFL it’s really unnecessary for a .mobi extension at all.
I honestly believe that this is a money making exercise for those who run it and not a lot else and what frustrates me is that in the end the man on the street knows nothing about .mobi
Regards
Mark
I’ve never thought this was really the right solution to the problem. The problem is not the TLD, it’s that you have to type the URL on a numeric keypad.
In Japan (by far the most successful market for mobile internet) most adverts now feature a 2-d bar code (“QR-Code”). This encodes the URL, so all you have to do is take a photo of it with your camera phone and you’re on the website. The URL can be fairly long, and the TLD used doesn’t matter. As for enforced standards, you’d hope any service that cares about their mobile presence would do some serious compatibility testing anyway.
I was quite pleased to see my N95 came with an application for reading these codes, but it’s not much use until it becomes a standard feature on other phones. I’m surprised nobody is really pushing QR-Codes here – they make casual mobile internet use much less hassle.
John