dotMobi auctions top ten domains – reaction

I really don’t think there is anything else to say! moves like this throw out whopping great big signals that say “help! we are lost, what was our business model again?”.

imho, dotmobi will be tomorrow’s chip papers…

steve

From the official dotMobi site..

“Given the strong demand for .mobi domain names, bidding at this initial auction will most likely be exciting,” said Neil Edwards, CEO of dotMobi. “We anticipate that the winning bidders of these Premium Name sites will develop relevant and useful content for mobile Internet consumers.”

What like the hosts of the below URL’s did for internet users?

http://www.celebs.com/
http://www.stockquotes.com/
http://www.wow.com/

It looks like dotMobi continues to elicit strong feelings

I’m a bit surprised by Steve Procter’s quote in regards to “business models.” Our premium names allocation plans were in dotMobi’s charter with ICANN. (It’s available at icann.org). And we’ve been discussing them with the press on a regular basis.

The premium name allocation process is designed as an alternative to the traditional “first-come, first-served” process. Since the “first-come, first-served” process can be — and often is — gamed in a variety of ways, dotMobi is trying to level the playing field by allocating these domains in ways that give everyone a chance to get them. “Auction” is one way we’re doing this.

“Request for Proposal” is another way that dotMobi is making domains available outside of the traditional “first-come, first-served” process. Details about the dotMobi RFP process are scheduled to be released the week of November 6, 2006.

Also, I understand Top Industry Insider’s frustrations. Data rates *are* high … that’s where dotMobi’s style guides and standards — based on the work of the W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative — come in. They help developers create mobile-ready sites that won’t take ages to download and increase a consumer’s cost to use the internet on a mobile. If users feel comfortable about using the mobile internet, we suspect the rates will lower with that growing use. That’s where the .mobi domain itself comes in: it’s simply a way of setting a user’s expectation that a site will be OK to use on a mobile phone. (OK to use + less cost = increased usage + reduced rates.)

As far as standardizing handset applications … well, I have to say that’s a good point. I don’t have a solid answer for you on that piece of the puzzle but I then haven’t seen that happen completely in the PC world yet — Played anything you’ve purchased from iTunes on your Zen Micro lately? — but we’re getting closer. Will it be the same with mobile phones? TBD.

.mobi is a .waste of .time
Have any these people ever used one of these ‘futuristic devices’ called the Mobile Phone? Call me a sceptic but i dont think they have, let alone use it for mobile browsing. if they had, they would have come up with something like .mob or even .mo, There’s no way i’d ever bother with .mobi when i can type .com and view a full page on my pda anyway!

Can we start up our own Top Level Domain for Fridges?, we could call it .frg but no, i think we should go along with the easier to remember… .EggsMilkBaconAndCheese

I guess I see that dotMobi’s heart is in the right place, in as much as pushing mobile internet is generally all good, although I disagree with the way they’ve gone about it, and I think the backlash against the concept is testament to the fact they’ve got a lot wrong. When the world is talking convergence, these guys are championing separation.. – it’s a bit like going backwards isn’t it?

Vance

I apologise if I should have heard about the premium thing – but clearly I wasn’t the only one taken by surprise.

However as far as the basic concept of .mobi, I am afraid you will never convince me that there is a place for it in this world. I commend you for trying to make developers build compliant websites, but I’m afraid the way you are doing it is totally patronising to the development community and is going to cause total unnecessary confusion in the real world. If you simply set up global seminars and sat everyone down and said “hey guys, you now need to design your sites for lots of devices and here are a few rules on doing so” then they would happily do it; just as they did it when Netscape and IE were in the infancy and needing many code changes for sites to work on both. The mobi just is not needed in order to acheive this end.

steve/itagg – “one domain, one itagg”
http://www.itagg.com on your pc
http://www.itagg.com on your mobile device
http://www.itagg.com on your fridge

Vance, how does an auction — which, remember, awards the domain to the highest bidder — “level the playing field”? You say an auction will “give everyone a chance to get them”, but that simply isn’t true — it inherently favors those with the deepest pockets.

This auction malarkey is simply another revenue maximization scheme on the part of dotMobi. Why not end the charade and simply come out and say it? All this stuff about wanting to do such great things for the mobile web is, as Steve says, patronizing.

Furthermore, your suggestion that .mobi’s style guides can help in some way to lower data costs is pretty laughable. As has been pointed out time and time again, all of the W3C guidelines, or any other aspect of designing content specifically for mobile devices can be done without a .mobi domain. Of course, the dotMobi folks conveniently ignore this, lest anyone catch on and not buy their pointless, expensive .mobi domain. Nice straw man with the iTunes/Zen line, too.

I think Steve Procter’s post above is very perceptive.

Its crazy to expect content providers to promote two URL’s and what does the bbc say on the “Today program” bbc.co.uk should (and does) work on mobile.

Ray Anderson, another “industry luminary” has been tracking .mobi for teh last 4 years or so and has a few relevant postings on his blog http://www.welcometothevillage.com (I don’t know how to link to entries…)

Roland
Wolfson Usability Centre

A phrase like “Its crazy to expect content providers to promote two URL’s” surprises me. I don’t see why a multiple domain strategy is a big leap.

A domain sets an expectation as to the content of a site. Do most business cards have one phone number? I usually see a main office number, a personal office number, a fax number and a mobile number. Each one sets a different expectation for reaching someone. Why should a domain behave differently?

If the only other domain were .com, I’d understand some of the reactions above. But it’s not … it’s one of dozens designed to meet specific user expectations.

I don’t see people having issues with, say, amazon.com versus amazon.co.uk versus amazon.fr versus amazon.co.jp, etc. I don’t see people getting nervous about domains like .travel or .biz or .aero or .coop or .museum?

I don’t see why .mobi shouldn’t be embraced in the same way — a tool to help users reach content they know will work (in this case, on their phones). When I’m on a mobile / low-bandwidth device, I’m looking for something specific and actionable. I’m not approaching that search with the same expectations as I would on my big-screen, high-bandwidth PC.

In short, optimised content “can be done” (as Carlo notes) but that doesn’t mean it *was* done. That’s pretty much all .mobi is trying to do – help users ID content that works on a mobile phone.

“That’s pretty much all .mobi is trying to do – help users ID content that works on a mobile phone.”

You don’t have to keep the facade up, around here, since it’s so transparent . If this were really true, why all the revenue maximization schemes, Vance?

I agree with Steve, if I go to a site I expect the site to figure out what device I’m using and format itself accordingly!. It’s not that hard to do, there are even projects out there that maintain a database of mobile devices and their capabilities (such as the excellent WURFL project at wurfl.sourceforge.net) that can help with detecting mobile devices.

I also have the same problem giving my personal e-mail and website addresses out to anyone who isn’t an ubergeek (null@invalid.name and http://invalid.name respectively).

I’ve been watching this debate trying to work out which side of the fence i sit on and end up in the middle. I quite like the idea of letting the general public know that a website has been specifically created to fit their mobile, creating the perception of an inherent quality of service .

At the same time I agree that websites should be integrating intelligence into their websites which automatically take account of what device you’re using, a la Steve Proctor. So perhaps the argument centres on whether the mobile / internet community can convince the consumer that .com & .co.xx websites DO actually render well to smaller devices – a feat which to date has only put people off from trying it again in the future.

Or, whether creating a .mobi (.m, .mo, .qlerqewx – doesn’t matter, provided there’s only ONE), will encourage people to believe they’re going to get a better user experience because they KNOW the site is dedicated to their mobile encouraging the real up take of mobile internet traffic.

Thinking about it, that might even encourage the mobile operators to reduce rates…

Vance,

What if you are a global company who wants to offer .mobi sites to each of the operating companies that you operate in. What is your suggestion? Can we get country level 2nd tier domains, such as .uk.mobi or fr.mobi? Or is .mobi the .mobi concept uniquely global?

.uk.mobi or .fr.mobi – oh what a brilliant observation and question!!! I must admit that one had escaped me. That has just given this argument another dimension 😉

I truly hope that Vance says that the web developers will have to add intelligence to the website to let it figure out which country you are in and give you the appropriate regional version 😉

steve procter

I also want to raise the general question of “what is a mobile device and what do we actually want to do with it. Why do dotMobi and Google think they know best about my needs?”…..

…..In 12-24 months from now I am going to own a Palm Treo 1G. It has internet explorer, a 480 wide screen with full colour and is using 3G as a minimum or that new fangled 4G network which I can’t remember the name of.

It can also connect automatically to wi-fi. Which is great because t mobile have just launched their new “all you can eat wifi access UK-wide for £10 per month” to tie in with them taking over the 3 biggest wifi companies to create a 95% coverage wifi network. So anyway you get the point.

So in 12-24 months I am sat in a taxi, checking my email and surfing a few websites. And my girlfriend is sat next to me, she has the same phone (aahhh, how sweet). She is checking out pizza places to go and eat our supper, whilst I am looking for pizza companies as part of my research to sell some texting technology into them (to help Ewan with his quest to order pizza’s straight from his phone 😉 So what do the two websites that we get back look like? How are they rendered? I want to see PizzaHuts’ corporate pages. But my girlfriend (lets call her Jane, I’ve always wanted to go out with a Jane) obviously wants to see location aware pages and go straight to the booking pages and see maps to help the taxi driver, etc.

So do Jane and/or me get redirected from google (because obviously that’s where we start our surfing journey due to the fact that Palm have hardcoded the google search page into the phone) to pizzahut.com or pizzahut.mobi? What is it that pizzahut put on each of those versions? Why have google decided which we should be sent to? Why have dotmobi told PizzaHut that from now on “this is how you will model your websites and content and wo betide if you do it differently”. google and dotmobi don’t know nuffin’ about pizzas and even less about what Jane and I need, even though they “think” we are both on mobiles and sat in a taxi therefore we must “want to find a pizza to eat now”.

or do we both go to pizzahut.com and PizzaHut do some intelligent rendering to handle the fact that neither of us are on 1600 pixel desktop screens and then present two nice icons saying “corporate pages” and “find my nearest restaurant”. And then do some nice work to present the appropriate pages in a way that they want because they understand pizza and their customers better than google or anybody else does.

There are admittedly a handful of unanswered questions above and I’m not sure anybody has the answer – much of it will come from mistakes over the coming years. But what I am sure of is that confusing us with different versions of a company’s website is not the way to go. We both see PizzaHut in google and we both want to go to that site. But then let PizzaHut and us have a direct conversation with each other about our needs rather than sticking your beak in our business.

It’s a bit like going into the post office and asking where the Handi Indian restaurant is. Instead of giving you directions the guy comes from behind the counter and walks with you to the restaurant (or another one that he thinks is better because he actually gets a commisions from them) and then trys ordering his favourite dishes for you.

steve procter

To answer the questions about national variations of .mobi sites, the official recommendation is to use the corresponding country code top level domain identifier as the third level domain identifier.

This is covered in depth in the dotMobi Domain Naming Guidelines.

oh dear. that’s not very impressive is it. So basically the answer is “do it yourself”. So we basically might as well just go for mobi.itagg.co.uk and mobi.itagg.co.fr

steve procter

It’s useless to argue whether .mobi is a good idea or not. It has already launched and it’s backed by Google, Microsofit, Nokia, and friends. They will force you to use it, so start getting used to it. Resistance is futile.

“oh dear. that’s not very impressive is it.”

That could apply to most anything coming out of .mobi, Steve. Get the impression they haven’t thought this through, beyond the PR and marketing spin?

Very interesting comments. One observation I have is that it may be useful to try and split out the issue of the auction process from the potential merits of a mobile-focused tld. Only time will determine if the premier name auction process proves more effective in aligning domain names with the optimal business models. We do know that the current model for allocations appears to be less than optimal. We also know that the auction process will continue to be controversial – simply because it stands to generate potentially significant revenue.

But let’s take a look at the merits of a mobile-focused tld outside of the auction debate. Let’s assume that there is no auction process and that dotmobi domain names will be allocated to their best match business model. Should we have a mobile-focused tld? Why would this be important?

Two main arguments for the mobile-focused tld can be summarized as 1) technical and 2) content. More specifically, technical device optimization and appropriate content match. Bandwidth, screen size, layout, and other ergonomic considerations head up the technical argument. The content argument deals with the concept of building a business model optimized for the unique requirements and preferences of the mobile consumer.

In either case, the optimal scenario is one where a consumer on a mobile device visits a site online which is seamlessly optimized both technically for the device and with regards to the content. At this point we can take a quick poll amongst those reading this blog and most likely find that we have strong consensus on this optimal scenario. However, it is here where we begin to form diverging opinions.

It appears that the primary arguments against this concept relate to the question of need. We don’t “need” a mobile-focused tld because any site can sense and adjust when visited by a mobile device. This specifically questions the first of our two arguments for a mobile-focused tld – the technical need. Since we have started with assumptions, let’s make one more assumption. Let’s assume that all sites on the internet sense and adjust perfectly to whatever device is visiting. So then, the technological standards for mobile compliant (even mobile optimized) are not an issue.

We are now left with the second argument in favor of the mobile-focused tld – content. What of this “appropriate content match” argument? Here is the first question: is the mobile consumer inherently different from other internet consumers? To put this another way; if we optimize our site for the average internet consumer, is this site at the same time optimized for the mobile consumer? If you are amongst the 9 out of 10 people I surveyed, you answered “yes – the mobile consumer is different” and “no – optimizing for one set of requirements does not mean you are optimized for another set of requirements”.

Let’s look at some concepts related to systems analysis and design – needs assessment, requirements gathering, marketing research, requirements definition, use-cases, process flow diagrams, functional design, business process design, technical design, acceptance testing, the requirements/features matrix, usability testing, and etc. These concepts all deal with the idea of focusing on the distinct user requirements instead of focusing on the technology. I would put forth the observation that those of you who argue that there is no need for a mobile-focused tld appear to be basing this primarily on the technical argument versus the content argument. Here I would submit my opinion that we absolutely need to have a mobile-focused tld, deliberately and clearly separated from all other tlds, that consumers can count on to be optimized for the unique requirements of their mobile sessions – both the technical components (should be a given) and more importantly, the content. Will dotmobi be this solution? That remains to be seen. But do we need some mobile-focused tld – yes, we do need one.

Hans — the technical and content considerations aren’t necessarily as separate as you indicate. For instance, visit google.com on a PC, and you get a site formatted for your PC browser with the relevant content. Visit google.com from your mobile device, and you get something that’s not just formatted for your mobile browser, but with different, more relevant content as well. And this all at the good ol’ google.com URL, right where your average user would expect it.

While I appreciate you’re thinking about a mobile-specific TLD rather than .mobi, this raises another question in my mind. What does .mobi (or anything else, for that matter, like .m or .mob or .phone or whatever) mean to the average consumer? While it may be easy for us within the industry to divine that .mobi has something to do with mobile, I’m quite skeptical that consumers will understand it means they’re supposed to visit a site with their phone.

Scott, “They will force you to use it, so start getting used to it. Resistance is futile”.

No they f*&%&*%^n won’t!!!

😉

steve procter

Hans – “Let’s look at some concepts related to systems analysis and design – needs assessment, requirements gathering, marketing research, requirements definition, use-cases, process flow diagrams, functional design, business process design, technical design, acceptance testing, the requirements/features matrix, usability testing, and etc”

Erm, ok then. Or we could just ask my mum what domain name to go to if she wants to visit a website when she’s on a mobile. I wonder which of these she’ll say…

1. “well the same one I use on my computer stephen. now stop asking silly questions and eat your peas up”, or

2. “ah well, now that’s an interesting point. I was reading a white paper only yesterday when sat next to Margaret on the 24 bus on the pro’s and con’s of using different tld’s to handle the varying aspects of technology and content on mobile devices… …although I must say that the section in the dotmobi document lodged at ICANN on providing an auction facility which will clearly favour the richer businesses is startling and…, well just don’t let your father hear about that one, you know what him and his Union friends are like…”

steve procter

Ok, i gave in and had a brief ‘open minded’ look at the examples of good .mobi sites on this page…
http://demo.mtld.mobi/

apparently:
“These sites showcase the use of dotMobi Switch On!â„¢ Guide to Web Development for delivering a better experience in browsing content via a mobile device.”

Pretty poor! actually they’re C##P!!!! the msn .mobi site took just as long to load as the .com site (both on my mobile). Totally pointless!! Basically WAP.

it has definately confirmed my .mobi loathing.

one more thing though…
If .mobi is for Mobiles ONLY, why do the people behind it have a .mobi extension for their PC site? surely they are breaking their own rules? because it’s definately NOT a mobile friendly site!

Ok, slight change to what i just posted…
The .mobi site does show a mobile version on my SPV c500, just not on my P900, N80 and 7710.
It appears that they (unsuccessfully) detect the type of browser and show the content in the appropriate manner for that platform. Isn’t that what we ‘apparently’ shouldn’t be doing?

I was lead to believe that we were supposed to ignore the fact that we can detect and optimize sites dynamically, and instead spend our money on a new tld so we don’t have to do that?

damn, i always miss out on something fun when I get sick.

I’ve been always partial to m.domain.com for mobiles if you need to advertise a mobile domain since it’s the same number of taps on a phone keypad and is free. If you want a mobi domain to use as an example of the awsome standards use blog.mobi.

I think the long term success of .mobi is only going to come if mobile phone browsers adopt it as the default tld rather then .com. If they don’t then I don’t think i’m going to need to renew my .mobi domain that I bought for protection. If they do then that’s when the resistance will be futile. If their smart they’ll allow you to modify your default tld.

I wish that instead of setting .mobi as the default it would be better to either put a standard string in the user agent that could identify a browser as mobile, then I could just say does the user agent have this string. Another alternative would be to send an additional header like the X_WAP_PROFILE sent by some browsers and then have the url sent also go somewhere useful. I’d like to see as much talk about the mobile browser standards as there is about the mobile site design standards. If we can change things at the browser level the effects will roll down to the developers by providing the tools needed to make a user friendly site regardless of the tld.

btw i think .mobi is dumb.

Carlo,

Regarding your comment “the technical and content considerations aren’t necessarily as separate as you indicate. For instance, visit google.com on a PC, and you get a site formatted for your PC browser with the relevant content.”

Thank you for that information – I was not aware that Google was doing this. I agree that this would make the “.com” more efficient (tech) and effective (content) without the need for a mobile-specific tld (such as .mobi). Still, until this is the norm for all .com sites, there is still an issue in that there would not be a general expectation that all/most sites would perform this technical and content matching. Perhaps this is more of a timing issue – does a mobile-specific tld achieve critical mass prior to the majority of “.com” sites adapting to the mobile device…

I agree with 90% of the comments here, though Steve you could make your case a lot better if you changed the tone 😉

1) .mobi is a ridiculous thing to type – M and O on the same key, and more letters than com. I’m completely with Shawn that if you have to use a different URL and wap.domain.tld (the de facto standard at least in Europe) is not appropriate, use m.domain.tld because it is free, it’s fewer keypresses etc

2) In general, if you can detect that a user is mobile, you can also make some assumptions about what they’re planning to do. Sorry Steve, but few people research corporate Pizza sites on their phones, you optimise for the location based ordering and provide a simple link to a sitemap or some other navigation system to get the other info some users may legitimately want. Doesn’t require anything too clever.

3) The country thing is one of the most obvious flaws in the whole argument for .mobi. It does not make things easier to break the existing domain hierarchies people are familair with – most people understand .com, and some of them understand .co.uk. If you thought a special domain was sensible and you trully cared about simplifying domains, you’d do country specific versions: .cell in the US, handy.de for Germany, etc. Upending the conventions people are familiar with is no help to anyone except those collecting the cash.

And .museum etc are all stupid too, we really don’t need this many – the only new one I can see an argument for is .xxx to simplify adult content filtering from minors etc, and even that only works when you make adult content purveyors abandon their other TLDs.

1) Google is in the future already, and in the future
a) your mobile knows where you are and delivers local results accordingly
b) the “key problem” is inexistent. Voice recognition will be the norm

2) Google has repeatedly proved its intention to
a) regulate how webmasters design their websites
b) “facilitate” to users navigation based on “good content” and good usability.

.mobi gives them the chance to do this departing from a “clean slate” over which they have control, instead of havig to be fighting the million of little search results problems that .com sites give them today

3) The market is massive, and they (.mobi) have the opportunity to become THE filter between all the businesses and individuals that want a mobile website in the world, and the network. Basically, they have the keys to the mobile world. Now imagine the size of that market. They can re-register the whole internet all over again. Imagine the fees that would be collected in an extremely short period of time…
Will they do it? I don’t know, but I think so.
Can they? Yes, they can
So I would be very surprised if they don’t do it, maybe even through brute force, defaulting gradually towards .mobi websites.

These are just some of the reasons. There are many more.
I think .mobi will either be the new .com, albeit more powerful, or the biggest business opportunity ever lost in the history of mankind.
But something tells me that they’ll do it. Why do I think so?
Basically…because they can
Greed drives humans.

Regards
Javier Marti
trendirama.com