Why .MOBI doesn't Matter

Owen posts this link to the iPhone video on his blog. To be fair, what this illustrated to me is that the only domain extension that counts, is the one you want to use. In my lifetime that will be .com and the 'country code tld' of the Country you live in. Others may take share at the earmarks,  but it is very hard to get users to change platforms without a compelling reason.

Perhaps if .mac or .goog created a tandem platform DNS that mirrored or shadowed existing extensions when viewed in a device such as iPhone. Doing this with the explicit intent of shaping user intent.  We're quite a way from there however and there's no immediately compelling or mercantilistic reason for doing that..  sorry..  was thinking aloud in this paragraph. John,  does our patent cover this? :-)

Comments

[Anthony]

Frank,

Thank you for pouring your knowledge into our brain cells. I freaking dig your artful writings.

MOBI will skyrocket, though.

Frank, are you familiar with Edelman?

If not, please go to Edelman.com. They are the premier global PR firm -- helped design & launch many brands - UPS, Samsung, AXE, DOVE, Microsoft, etc. -- the mTLD is also an Edelman client. Edelman has MAJOR PR plans for MOBI.

Frank, are the launches of ing.mobi, Polo.mobi, NBA.mobi, UniversalChannel.mobi, FoxNews.mobi,BMW.mobi, Hilton.mobi, Amtrak.mobi, StateFarm.mobi, t-mobile.mobi, nokia.mobi and SEVERAL other Fortune 1000 dotMOBI sites meaningful to the MOBI brand?

When will there be a tipping point?

What & how many more Fortune 1000 companies would you like to see launch dotMOBI sites before you reanalyze your opinion?

DOT COM is King, but MOBI is the Prince -- second in line to the Mobile Web throne.

The Edelman giant is awakening.

Please stay tuned....

***FS*** I will.. be careful out there sir.. That iphone thing looks like the internet as we know it now on a new device.. .mobi wouldn't bring many extra type-ins if that's the case. Thanks sincerely for the compliment.

[Andrew Hyde]

The simplest most compelling reason is there are no more names left. Most people aren’t selling. They’re adding roads to their existing sites. .Com’s as great as they are and will always be, are for the most part gone. Sure you can find deals here and there or pay big bucks for the conjunction of several words, but for the new techies and like my kids generation when they enter the market, they think like they text message each other, .bz (the Belize ccTld works for business). We all know the .com is tops, but it is at saturation. In an earlier blog, you made reference to the domain industry being like the oil industry with reference to .Com’s, but it is not, there are far more reserves of oil (even when it will eventually run out), than there ever was a supply of words, joined phrases and the like to sustain in just the .Com segment. And when these other markets start to show signs of life, the value of the .Coms will diminish in value.

***FS*** I think .bz are great if you live in belize .. In the rest of the world they are viewed (by the masses) as a typo of .biz.

[Andrew Hyde]

Typo of Biz isn't a bad thing, either. Aside from the market logic, everyone wants what they own to work, occasionally ignoring market forces. The generation to be doesn't care where the extension came from, it's unrestricted and available. When you find commerce there word will travel around the world. I am not pushing .bz, well, to be honest a little bit, but price will make the market in the other name segments.

On .MOBI - I saw this tag line that sums it up: "Friends don't let friends register dot MOBI"

[owen frager]

The illustration on my blog was meant to refute the hype that 550,000 dotMobi registrations are proof that this new extension is what was needed to make mobile browsing viable.

It's not the extension that drives the user experience. In the Edelman example cited above, all of those are big brands whose dotMOBI site works in conjunction with a companion dotCOM site. That's the purpose of dotMOBI and why dotCOM owners have inherent first legal rights to any dotMOBI with the same name. That's good news for Frank and others with big dotCOM investments, because if dotMOBI takes off he can take all the dotMOBI's he'll need ever back without having to invest in them. That’s all Edelman proves.

Try comparing the PPC experience a user gets on flowers.mobi (already as much optimized as dotMOBI can or ever will give you with a PPC model) on any mobile browser compared to anything demo'd on that Apple demo site and you can't ever argue that dotMOBI could or would be a PPC or type-in play.

Besides type-ins, the only other way to expect return on a domain investment is the hope that you will have something brandable that a company might chose for naming itself or it's products in a world where it's easier to start with a domain rather then to spin money and time to choose a name for which there is no domain to be found. That said, you'd need all extensions, especially dotCOM, to drive that kind of decision for a major corporation who'd be willing to pay 6-67 figures. dotMOBI alone has NO resale value. ZERO.

Meanwhile, I got an email from a reader who acted on my Sept blog tip and traded out a domain that was earning $100 a month on PPC for 2000 shares of Apple stock. So far he's up almost $70K.

All of which means if ROI is your objective maybe the domain business on it's best day in 2007 is not the place where your money can work as hard as possible.

[David Bleaman]

Frank,

Thanks for sharing. I concur, Com Is King.

David Bleaman

[owen frager]

I missed this point:
"the mTLD is also an Edelman client."

Of course they have all kinds of plans for it.
You can't take plans to the bank.

[Charles]

I really don't get this dotmobi hatred. For heaven's sake, dotcom is the undisputed champ, no problem with that. Why not just let dotmobi be whatever it can be? As for Mr. Frager's "you can't take plans to the bank," I happen to know for a fact that you can! If they like your plans, you get the cash, if not, well try again. When you have a GLOBAL mindset, you realize that iPhones aren't for everyone yet ($$$) so the rest of us will have use for .mobi for some time to come.

***FS*** I really wish .mobi investors well.. if you can buy a great .mobi cheap then more power to you as you try to flip it to somebody, but I genuinely feel for folks who wrongly backed up the truck believing the ext. would provide some technical advantage. The iphone is going to redefine the mobile browsing standard and it shows .mobi gets little if any edge.

[David Wrixon (aka Rubber Duck)]

From where I stand dot Mobi is at best defensive registration under duress. The much vaunted Amtrak.mobi forwards to a dot com URL. Give me a break!

Dot Com is pretty much exhausted if you look at the World from an Anglo-centric perspective. Within 5 years there will be getting on for a billion domains of which half will be dot coms, only a quarter or them will be in English and probably less in than half in Latin Script.

OK, the English ones may always be amongst the most expensive, but in terms of new registrations,they will be fairly insignificant.

If you are talking ROI you need to be taking a serious look at IDN. OK, many perceive them as risky, but high ROIs are always obtained from projects that are perceived as risky. Those perceptions, however, are often driven by unfamiliarity. Take the time to familiarize yourself a little and you may find the those high ROIs are actually available with very little risk.

***FS*** I agree that once the standard is more clear.. .com IDN will be stronger than .mobi and others put together .. but in the looooong run and for global applications IDN may have issues.. regionally they could be great traffic pointers. Probably all you'll need to make a great living tho.

[lds]

Why does everyone feel so threatened by .mobi?

Is it because large .com owners feel that it could jeopardize their income?

Why is their not the same venom directed toward .biz or .info?

Or can it be that .mobi has taken the number 3 or possibly number 2 position in the domain world in 7-months?

I am a novice so if someone could please explain I would appreciate it.

Thank you.

***FS*** lds, the truth is, the largest .com owners don't need another dollar of earned income to live the Roy Rogers sunset moment.. bring on .mobi, .whatever.. but when regular people write saying: "I'm just getting started in the domain business and think I could make a lot of money buying wordwrordword.mobi names", I feel it's incumbent on me to point to previous experiences and TLD hype that didn't pay off; giving reasons why it might not work again this time around. Everyone is free to make their own decisions when armed with information. This is just a counterpoint to the marketing/hype. Nothing more, no agenda.

[Cameron Johnson]

"All of which means if ROI is your objective maybe the domain business on it's best day in 2007 is not the place where your money can work as hard as possible."

Ridiculous. soTotally and laughably . I haven't found a single investment as ludicrously profitable as domain names. Whether you sell fast or slow, you simply cannot find anything that returns better than a well-chosen domain in 2007. I'm gathering Owen's referring only to .mobi's in making his point. In which case, yes, money's better spent elsewhere. Long love Apple. :P

***FS*** Your first sentence is absolutely correct, It's not as easy as it used to be but this is a very good business.

[Javier Marti]

I am just writing an article about .mobi these days. It will be more like thinking aloud rather than a formal answer to most concerns here, since there are no certainties from where we stand, one way or the other.

If you want, I can send you a copy before I publish it in Trendirama. My speciality is the future, not just domain names, so if I am wrong in my reasoning I accept the input of domain specialits that tell me what they think...or where I am wrong.

.mobi has the potential to be bigger than .com in record time, or one of the biggest PR hypes in the last 10 years. (and with the internet bubble, we have seen a lot of those)
It could also be the biggest lost global business opportunity for .mobi backers -or any company, for that matter- ever.

Regards
Javier

[Drewbert]

.bz? Gimme a break.

.bz has been through something like 3 reincarnations so far, and the way Belize is going (downhill, rapidly) I sure wouldn't want to put much money into .bz domains.

Barge pole, mate. Barge pole.

[VS]

i hope more domainers focus on dotMobi and divest from their dotCom holdings :)

***FS*** Ha!~ .. me too! :) What am I doing out here? .. I should be telling a different story.

[DP]

Frank,

Have seen you make the statement several times ".COM or the ccTLD of the country you live in".

You may have covered this elsewhere in the past, but would love to hear your thoughts on .US -- sleeping giant or a dud?

***FS*** I like .us as an expandable area.. it will grow. It's just that for most in America .COM means doing business in a US centric way, so .com has become the defacto .US in the people's hearts and minds. In other Countries there are languages, geography, currencies, etc at play which make CCTlds very strong and appealing.

I think a rising tide will float all boats as it relates to .us.. as more people come online they need names.. the .us shows you're proud of your Country and many people stateside will eventually embrace them as a viable alternative if .com gets too crowded.. still those successfull .us holders will eventually reach for a .com

[Ravi Venkatraman]

Looks like more & more sites will be using M dot to go the mobile.
http://gigaom.com/2007/05/11/m-dot-webs-answer-to-mobile/

[Edwin Sherman]

m.domain.com seems to be a trend that is picking up speed:
http://gigaom.com/2007/05/11/m-dot-webs-answer-to-mobile/

***FS*** I was wondering when somebody would go there Edwin.. i like it. could also do mmm.domain.com reverse of www

[Anthony]

Edwin & Frank,

Showcased below is the mTLD's Chief Technology Officer response to Edwin's comments today:

" 1) Users can't be expected to guess whether a given site's mobile interface is m.thingy.com, mobile.thingy.com, thingy.com/mobile or (even!) thingy.com/xhtml. Outside of .mobi, there's as little sign of convention as there is with the diversity of different devices

2) .mobi, as the top-level-domain designed for mobile, provides a lelev of trustworthiness to the user (although they may not explicitly know it). We have a set of best practices, developed with the W3C, that we expect our registrants to build their sites to. And theoretically the right to disable sites if they flaunt basic principles of mobile suitability.

3) It's not blindingly obvious to a non-technical user that m.site means mobile. Put it on a billboard ad and people are going to scratch their heads. I would have hoped that a URL ending .mobi has a fairly obvious intention - even to my grandmother.

I think autodetection does have an impact of course - being able to spot a mobile device and route accordingly. But .mobi is also about more than markup suitability - it's also about providing services suitable for the mobile context. And I believe users should a) be given mobile-relevant services by default, but b) still be allowed to go to the full PC site should their patience (and browser's abilities) permit it. With auto-detection, that's a very rare choice."

My comments:
Gentlemen, dotMOBI is not a technological breakthrough, but more technologically useless things have caught on.

[GoldenBear]

"Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster expects Apple (AAPL) will sell 3.2 million iPhones in 2007, 12.4 million in 2008, and an astronomical 45 million of them in 2009."

Is everyone ready for 60mm additional Safari browser installations in 2 years?

I wonder if the seasonally slow PPC times make a little blip-up as users surf more while on vacation and on the go.

Oh, and Long live .com :-D

***FS*** Just amazing.. I have to pinch myself.

[owen frager]

Did you see the new iPhone spot- it says something like- "This is not the mobile internet. This is not a compromised Internet. This is not the internet squeezed into a mobile screen... it's just THE Internet... on a phone (audio sounmd of ring)

[owen frager]

Did you see the new iPhone spot- it says something like- "This is not the mobile internet. This is not a compromised Internet. This is not the internet squeezed into a mobile screen... it's just THE Internet... on a phone (audio sounmd of ring)

[David Wrixon]

Still perplexed about the big Mobi sales at TRAFFICS, and trying to figure out why people would need this extension now that Firefox is committing to developing for Symbian, it suddenly struck me that there is a much more profound and fundamental reason why companies will not wish to do this.

Sure it is possible to run another version of your site that is formatted for existing mobile phones. There problem is that most commercial sites have to run very large databases that need to be kept up to date to avoid selling items they don't have, or tracking latest bidding. By adopting the dot mobi approach, you are committing to the requirement of synchronising databases or tying both the dot com and dot mobi sites to a third database. For most companies this is going to seem terribly complicated. Diverting to separate web pages within the same site seems more straight forward, but clearly, the ideal is solution is to lie back and let web browsing software do the hard work. I think that will be the approach that most adopt.

[Jeffrey Tonetti]

Latest .Mobi results are in....BIG BIG MONEY, not to mention Google Launched Adsense for mobile. .Com maybe king, but .Mobi is the KingMaker going forward-

***FS*** If you can make money flipping them then respect to you.. Just no merchantable traffic there.. nothing to write home about anyway.

[David Wrixon]

Mobile browsing is going to be huge. There a lot more phones tan computers especially in developing countries.

Goolge Adsense for Mobile is essential as PC marketing and Mobile Marketing are distinct sectors.

Mobile browser development is now bounding ahead. The only problem is that it will obviate the need for separate web pages for mobile browsing.

Those that think all dot com sites will be duplicated as Dot Mobi site, just haven't got it. Database synchronisation problems are going to be massive. And why should large corporations bother when they can sit back and let the Web Browser take the strain. The Dot Mobi party is over. Perhaps that is why they are now so keen to shift the top names. The hang-over is going to be awesome!