Want one of those “.mobi” suffixes for your wireless Web site? Get out your checkbook.
The company behind the mobile-only top-level domain closed its first online auction earlier this month, raking in more than $850,000 as it hawked 100 mobile Web addresses to the highest bidders. Among the most sought-after URLs were hosting.mobi (which sold for $101,000), bank.mobi ($51,501) and download .mobi ($51,500).
The auction of “premium” URLs was the latest release of names from dotMobi, the Dublin, Ireland-based company behind the Internet domain. DotMobi last year held an off-line auction for premium site names before opening registration for coveted URLs to the public.
“This is the first time we’ve said, ‘Let’s get a batch of them out there,'” dotMobi spokesman Vance Hedderel said of the online auction, which was produced by domain vendor Sedo. “I hate to say we’re pioneers, but very honestly, no other company that owns domain rights has ever done this before.”
Big bucks, big backers
And the golden goose that is .mobi could continue to deliver. The next online auction, slated for the end of the month, will include soon-to-be destinations such as adult.mobi, cars.mobi, love.mobi and personal.mobi. A third auction set to be held in late November.
Backers of the mobile-only domain include such heavyweights as L.M. Ericsson, the GSM Association, Microsoft Corp., Nokia Corp., Visa and Vodafone Group plc. And a number of high-profile companies such as BMW, AAA, Business Week and The Weather Channel have built .mobi sites in an effort to extend their brands to consumers on mobile phones.
The domain is designed as a consumer-facing tag, signaling sites that are usable on handheld devices. But while there’s undeniable demand for .mobi URLs, some believe a mobile-exclusive domain is unnecessary-and potentially harmful. Many online publishers are already using technology that can detect the kind of device being used to access specific Internet destinations and redirect wireless users to made-for-mobile sites, which are often identifiable only by an “m” or the word “WAP” in the URL. And transcoding technologies can automatically format existing Web pages for the small screens of mobile phones.
Confusion concerns
Adding another top-level domain to the mix will only serve to confuse users, detractors say, hindering uptake of the wireless Web. Even Tim Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3), lobbied the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers not to adopt the URL.
“I may want to look up a restaurant on my laptop, bookmark it, and then, when I only have my phone, check the bookmark to have a look at the evening menu,” Berners-Lee, who’s often referred to as the father of the Web, said in 2004. “Dividing the Web into information destined for different devices, or different classes of user, or different classes of information, breaks the Web in a fundamental way.”
And those .mobi sites aren’t exactly drawing overwhelming traffic, according to Gregory Markel of Infuse Creative, a Los Angeles-based search engine marketing company.
“Yahoo is one of the few remaining search engines that will offer .mobi” sites in its search results, Markel said during a conference in Denver earlier this month. “What is that telling you about how the best and the brightest are viewing it? The answer is, they’re not.”
That probably has more to do with the overall lack of people on the wireless Web than the viability of the .mobi suffix, of course. And while Google’s search engine may not give .mobi sites high priority, the Internet giant is among dot-Mobi’s investors.
Hedderel said dotMobi is helping to spur usage by enforcing standards and requiring site operators to actively develop their domains. The company is developing tools that allow developers to build more mobile-friendly Web pages and is working with the Mobile Marketing Association to create best practices for Internet publishers.
And, Hedderel said, it’s those high-dollar auctions that are underwriting such efforts.
“The money is helpful because it helps us build tools . and all of these things are going to be made available for free,” he continued. “The money we’re getting from these things helps fund that, but at the same time, if there’s no content, there’s no mobile Internet. Our role is to make the mobile Internet come to life.”
