You’ve been waiting, you’ve been patient, you’ve been getting by somehow with .biz and .info, but the time has come at last. You can now have our own .mobi domain name. As of today, registration of .mobi domains is open to the general public at $25 for two years.
The debate as to whether or not we need another top level domain isn’t one that we can solve in the pages here on MobileCrunch, so we’ll leave it be….
No, we take that back. We don’t need another TLD , especially not one specifically for mobiles. But that hasn’t stopped 13,000 individuals from signing up for their own .mobi domains, and probably won’t deter the 200,000 other new signups MLTD, the group who oversees the domain, thinks are in the pipe.
We’ll see what happens.
.mobil Registration [ pc.MLTD.mobi]
Yeah, real smart … use 4 characters for a domain extension meant for _mobile devices_. they could have at least acquired ‘.m’ instead.
seriously, we don’t need another TLD. .com is more than sufficient. this is just another way for ‘dotmobi’ to make a ton of cash.
Comment by Arjun — September 27, 2006 @ 9:19 am
Amen to that. And no amount of propagandizing on the part of the dotmobi consortium will alter this fundamental truth.
Everything required for mobile standards has been clearly and adequately laid out by the W3C.
Oliver
Comment by Oliver — September 27, 2006 @ 9:41 am
I think this is actually a great idea. Mobile devices will always have different needs than ‘traditional’ computers, namely, the small screen size. I think .mobi is the first new TLD with a lot of promise.
Comment by Mark — September 27, 2006 @ 4:08 pm
Mark, You clearly aren’t seeing the critical points here. First while mobile devices definitely have different functional requirements seperating them out from the rest of the web only insure confusion, additional expense on multiple levels, and further guarantee that the sort of real integration that we require for a seemless browsing experience across all devices will never come to fruition if artifices like .mobi support non-conforming standards for web development, particular any which differ from those developed by the W3C and agreed upon by the majority of web developers world wide.
Beyond this it is pretty clear to me and many of my fellow mobilists agree that beyond being unnecessary and costly for entrepreneurs, this is mainly just an initiative that is first and foremost a means to line the pockets of those that are operating this TLD. The pricing model that they’ve established, which is vastly different from the rational one used for all other domains is pretty clear evidence of this fact.
I only wish that people would see this for what it is and resist the temptation to provide revenue to people that are taking advantage of a system and making it worse for all concerned in the process.
I can’t stress strongly enough how much I object to this idea and how objectionable I find the tactics being employed by those behind this TLD.
Oliver
Comment by Oliver — September 28, 2006 @ 2:32 am
[...] .mobi Open For Registration if you’re interested in the new top level domain targeted directly at mobile. [...]
Pingback by Pig Pen - Web Standards Compliant Web Design Blog » Blog Archive » .mobi Open For Registration — September 28, 2006 @ 11:52 pm
Late to this post, but the issue is current for me.
Sadly, websites like mine will need to get the .mobi version simply as a defensive act. I can’t setup mob.winelog.net and then let someone else create a website at winelog.mobi.
In any case, I’m currently trying to figure out what the best address for a mobile version of a site is. What is the de-facto standard out there. Google seems to like …/mobile, I’ve seen some mob.whatever.com’s. Lots of sites just use server processing to figure out if the connecting device is mobile. That sounds fun and easy, but I like letting the user decide if their device is mobile (this will actually get harder as time goes on. for instance, I would prefer to view a mobile version of a site on some of those crazy small Vaio laptops). Also, most of these sites that autodetect, provide a link anyway. So we still have the question.
I’d appreciate any feedback you guys would have. Comment here or wander over to my post on the topic:
http://www.strangerstudios.com/blog/2007/01/17/what-address-to-use-for-winelog-mobile/
Thanks.
Comment by Jason Coleman — January 17, 2007 @ 3:11 pm