Dialing Up a Web Site Requirement: New .mobi TLD Imposes Strict Requirements

[mandy]

A company backed by Microsoft Corp. and some cell phone industry heavyweights is causing a stir with new rules that accompany the Web site addresses it's now distributing.

The firm, mTLD Top Level Domain Inc., based in Dublin, Ireland, requires a certain look and feel for Web sites located at addresses that end in ".mobi," its new top level domain (TLD) that signals the site is designed to be viewed on cell phones.

The mTLD rules, which are a first, pose a significant question about the extent to which private corporations can control the use of TLDs and what are valid reasons to do so.

full article: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1877249,00.asp

[Kristijntje]

Update: .mobi TLDs will be available for registrationin May.

Mobile Top Level Domain (mTLD), the company behind the .mobi (dotmobi) domain, will begin registering Internet addresses in May geared toward mobile devices, a company executive said Wednesday.

The domain suffix comes with a new set of design standards that dotMobi chief executive officer Neil Edwards said will make the Internet more accessible on tiny, portable screens.

Edwards, who's relocating to the mTLD headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, is betting that soon more consumers will log onto the Internet through a mobile device to lookup telephone numbers or seek prices on goods, such as Apple's iPod, rather than turn on their PC.

The .mobi suffix should eliminate core problems associated with browsing on .com sites, including large graphics and multimedia content...

full article: http://www.informationweek.com/internet/...=184417334

[mandy]

The .mobi domain is now available for registration to members of the wireless industry and will become available to trademark holders in June:

Monday, the company opened registration for companies that want a dot-mobi domain name. In a matter of hours, thousands of websites were signed up, including Yahoo.mobi and Hotjobs.mobi. For now, registration for dot-mobi Web sites is open only to members of wireless industry trade associations, which include wireless carriers, handset manufacturers and media companies, including Yahoo Inc., that want to make money from providing content to the wireless Web...

Companies with trademark-validated names will be able to register in June for 70 days to avoid "cyber-squatters" registering well-known names. Registration will be open to generic names in September...

A dot-mobi domain name costs $140 a year for trademark names and $45 a year for generic names, compared with about $10 a year for .com or .net domain names. The company says that the higher prices are meant to discourage cyber squatters from taking advantage of a new domain name...

full article: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB1...?mod=blogs

[mandy]

UpdateL Public registration of .mobi names will begin next week:

The demand for internet domain names specifically used for mobile phones is expected to reach fever pitch next week when registration is opened up to the public. Nearly 13,000 trademarked websites have already been registered by companies over the past four months.

Next Tuesday, the public can apply to register web sites using the ".mobi" suffix on a first-come, first-served basis. The company charged with registering names expects up to 90,000 such sites to be registered within the initial 10-day "land-rush" period as people look to snap up domain names that could prove lucrative in the future. It expects several hundred thousand such sites to be registered once the price of registering the domain names falls.

Mobile phone operators in the UK have offered internet surfing via handsets for some years, but the customer experience has been frustrating for many users. Accessing familiar websites on a phone has proved cumbersome as those pages are designed to be viewed and navigated using a computer, not a phone. It has also proved expensive as surfers pay to download an entire website that often includes rich graphics and functions that do not work on most handsets...

full article: http://news.independent.co.uk/business/n...696183.ece

[accentnepal]

.MOBI has created quite a lot of excitement in a small portion of the domain reseller community. Along with Microsoft, the extension is run by Google, Samsung, Nokiea and a number of other heavyweights.

There is hope (not confirmed) that the next generation of internet-capable cell phones will have .MOBI as the default extension for web sites typed into them. At the TRAFFIC conference Fun(dot)mobi sold for $100,000 and flowers(dot)mobi sold for $200,000 - both prices were far more than would be expected for a new, unproven extension.

There are simple scripts that can detect if a user is on a cellphone and send that user a web page optomized for a small screen, but .mobi backers say that on a .mobi site the user will know before hand that the site will work perfectly on his phone, so he will prefer .mobi sites.

And there are a whole lot of cell phones.....

[regic]

And there are a whole lot of cell phones....

And Internet access via cell phones is growing rapidly. Almost 10% of TT's traffic is from the mobile side..

see also:
Websites and Browsers: the Rise of the Cellphone

[mandy]

The Dublin-headquartered provider of the international .mobi mobile internet domain has revealed that it has now registered over 400,000 domain names.

The landmark number has been reached just one year after the registration body established an operation in Dublin and just months after mobile domains were available to buy...

To coincide with the growing interest in the mobile domain and the approach by brands, the Dublin-based top-level domain (TLD) player has introduced a range of tools for developers including site building tools and analysis tools.

“The reality is the next generation of internet content is mobile,” opined Neil Edwards, dotMobi’s chief executive...

full article: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news...single7903

From last month, an interview with Pinkard Alan Brand from dotMobi:

(8 ) I suppose a lot of .mobi domains are still in the development stage but according to calculations and analysis of the state done by dotMobi, what percentage of domains .mobi are developed?, Which are your estimations and forecasts about it?

I don’t have figures to share, but I do know there is quite a bit of development activity going on and we are encouraged by the activity we are seeing, especially since we started offering free tools such as our MobiReady Report and dotMobi emulator through our dev.mobi site. You can also check out some of the latest new .mobi sites by visiting our site at dotmobi.mobi . I’ve even linked to some on my personal mobile site at pinky.mobi.

I’ve also noticed a variety of free content building sites being offered by our registrars and by organizations such as mobiSiteGalore.com. I think we will all look back and see 2007 and 2008 as turning point years in the development of off-deck mobile content. 

full interview: http://www.domaininformer.com/news/news/...about.html