It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of .mobi. I haven’t had much to add since I posted on it back in May, so I’ve avoided writing about it here. But the mobile-specific domain’s administrators have done a couple things recently I want to draw attention to.
Last week, over at Techdirt, I posted on .mobi’s plans to distribute “premium” domains in what they call an “equitable” manner intended to ensure the little guy has a shot at securing some of them: through beauty contests and something completely geared towards “the little guy” — auctions. We’re not talking about a dozen, a few dozen, or even a few hundred, but 5,000 domain names. While I appreciate mTLD’s CEO, Neil Edwards responding to my post, I find his response pretty unsatisfying. This auction system, according to him, isn’t a money-grab for two reasons: first, .mobi could have held back 100,000 names instead of 5,000; and second, because if mTLD didn’t do this, the names would just have ended up in the hands of domain speculators, who would resell them for inflated prices later on. Basically, it sounds like he’s saying mTLD isn’t as greedy as they could be, and that instead of letting the domain speculators pocket that cash, it’s going to maximize its own revenues through an auction.
But, after that, they’ve still outdone themselves in announcing the “.mobi mobile emulator”. The emulator is on the .mobi site, surrounded with some, ahem, interesting copy:
If you’re not happy with what you see, - if you see anything at all – it’s time to join the dotMobi Community by getting your .mobi domain name and optimizing your site for the mobile Internet.
.mobi sites solve the biggest barriers to mobile Internet use:
* Poorly formatted pages
* Inappropriate or excessive content
* Slow access and long load times , leading to costly mobile bills
* Difficult logins
* Difficult navigation
If there’s anything flakier and more inconsistent than the browsers in mobile handsets, it’s the emulators of those browsers. So slapping an emulator on a web page, then acting as if it not rendering a site correctly is proof somebody needs to buy a .mobi domain a little off base in concept. In reality, it’s actually even worse, since the .mobi emulator doesn’t call up the proper content on some sites that automatically serve correctly formatted content to mobile devices. This, of course, behooves .mobi by making the supposed problem it’s trying to solve appear more glaring — creating a view of the mobile internet that isn’t accurate, but better suits its marketing.
The .mobi emulator is made to look like a Nokia N70. I happen to have a Nokia N70 sitting here on my desk, so let’s do some comparisons.
When I go to “bbcnews.com” in the N70’s browser, I get redirected to http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile, and end up with the image below on the left — just what I’d want, really. In the emulator, instead of getting the mobile content, I get an error message you see on the right. So there’s one mobile site, available in the same place it is on the desktop, .mobi pretends doesn’t exist.
Ok, now let’s try our own site. On the left, you get the humble, basic mobile-formatted content on the real mobile browser; the right, another error.
One more — the .mobi folks often point to weather.mobi as an example of a .mobi site. But what if I’m an average Joe that’s never heard any of this .mobi stuff, and I want to go to weather.com instead? Works just fine on the phone (below left), whereas, somewhat embarrassingly, it doesn’t in the emulator. So here’s a site that’s got a good mobile site, has bought into the .mobi hype, and still they can’t get it right, apparently.
It’s not newsworthy, or surprising, that this emulator doesn’t work well. But the fact that it craps out on perfectly good mobile sites, available at their standard addresses — for whatever reason — then says .mobi is the solution, does not sit well at all. These sites have followed an ideal solution: making their content available to mobile users in a relevant format at a familiar address. But since that solution doesn’t involve buying a .mobi domain, it is apparently inferior or undesirable. The fact is, overcoming “the barriers to mobile internet use” .mobi cites on this page have nothing to do with .mobi. It doesn’t solve any of them, it’s just a domain (and an expensive one at that) which doesn’t intrinsically or automatically accomplish anything for site owners. Making a site mobile-friendly has nothing to do with whether it’s available at a .mobi address, and simply buying a .mobi domain won’t solve site owners’ problems — which is hardly the impression this page attempts to deliver.
I’m not going to accuse the .mobi folks of acting maliciously in this instance, but they’re toeing the line by providing an inaccurate representation of the state of the mobile internet, then holding themselves up as the solution.
[tags]mobile, mobile web, mobile internet, .mobi, mtld, xhtml, wap[/tags]
On .mobi…
I haven’t expressed much about how I feel about .mobi - months ago I wrote a piece about it, but never finish editing it… Today Carlo wrote a very good piece on .mobi, which I am going to piggyback on…
.mobi is not needed - there is no technic…
The dotMobi Mobile Emulator…
Some of you may have noticed that we recently put a mobile phone emulator on mtld.mobi. The purpose of the emulator is simply to raise awareness to the fact that the vast majority of existing websites do not work well…
Carlo - good write-up. I am not convinced about .mobi - it brings more harm than good. Your piece inspired me to write another piece on .mobi (on my blog), expressing wanted I to say for a long time. Good job, thanks.
ceo
[...] Playing At Now? On .mobi Via dotMobi blog2006-08-26 @ 15:37 | mobile development | Comments (0) | PermalinkCommentsNo comments on this post so farLeave a CommentNameEmailURLYour CommentAnti-Spam VerificationCode (please copy to input field) Auto-BR (convert line-breaks to <br> tags)ABOUT ME AND THIS BLOGAbout MeHOT TOPICS ON THIS BLOGFrom tatoo to webloggo.nokia.chKAYWA on Google MobileKAYWA Reader is outLIFT06 > A conference …QRCode tatooedSemacode for Smoothpla…Semapedia, barcodes fo…MOBILE LIFEAll about mobile lifeCharlie SchickChristian LindholmMobHappyNeo nomadPasta and vinegarPicturephoningRingtoniaRussell Beattie NotebookSmartMobsTextuallyWe make money not artKAYWA LINKSBlogmagazin [de]Blogmagazine [fr]Blogzine [en]KAYWA HomePortalogMY MOBILE WEBiFeedYou MobileMaxpediaWAParoundWapediaWapipedia CATEGORIES Allblogsbookmarksdefaulteventgeekkaywamobile applicationmobile developmentmobile webnomad lifestylenomad technonomad toolssemanticswissweb developmentSEARCH searchARCHIVEAugust 2006July 2006June 2006May 2006April 2006March 2006February 2006January 2006December 2005November 2005October 2005September 2005August 2005« August 2006 »MoTuWeThFrSaSu 12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 GALLERIESHeaders [2] Les blogs 2.0 [24] [...]
I think .mobi has its place: as, essentially, a marketing tool for mobile-specific websites. Of course, we could get exactly the same result by just deciding that all mobile sites will live at http://mobile.whatever.com/ and not creating a new TLD.
dotMobi doesn’t really solve any of the technical problem facing the mobile web, but I don’t think you should totally discount the importance of being able to tell new smartphone users that .mobi sites will usually work and usually not look like crap. At least until everyone starts using Opera Mini.
(Hmm, didn’t expect find myself defending .mobi…)
I’ve never seen the need for the .mobi TLD, and as someone who provides mobile content sites (and develops for others), I have no interest whatsoever in purchsing or using a .mobi domain.
Nicely though my flagship WAP site does render properly in their emulator - but then I’m being lazy and there’s no scripts or redirects, just pure WML
The errors (and a quick check) seem to indicate the emulator itself has been poorly written, as it’s obviously ignoring any header redirects that a server may issue, and may even be returning the wrong WML headers or device identification strings - so the BBC (which happily detects my WML-enabled Firefox installation as a web browser, not a WML device), is detecting the emulator as a web browser not as a WML device.
Enrique,
While I appreciate your carefully considered opinion on this, and that you’ve taken the time to state your thoughts carefully, I respectfully disagree with your opinion. I’d like to draw your attention to our blog where we have recently addressed some of the points that you raised.
http://dotmobi.typepad.com/dotmobi/misconceptions/index.html
Referring to your comment about the user experience (” What gives .mobi folks the right to define what is good or bad experience?”), I think it is very important to note that the dotMobi guide is almost entirely based on the work of the W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative. We absolutely agree that dotMobi should not make these decisions in isolation, and it is for this reason that we are key sponsors of this open initiative which draws on the experience of tens of companies world wide in an open and documented manner.
Finally, referring to your comment about letting the market decide (” The .mobi folks are trying to bypass the most important piece in the evolution of the (mobile) web - letting the market, the users, decide what is good or not good.”), we couldn’t agree more, but the problem is that people simply don’t seem to realise that browsing on the mobile phone is possible. In a way, this is the whole point of dotMobi — a URL the lets people know that a site will work on their mobile device.
Ronan
Ronan,
Perhaps Enrique’s blog (http://cenriqueortiz.com/weblog) would be a better place to answer the criticisms he raised of .mobi. If you’re going to comment here, you’re more than welcome to address any of the issues I raised, rather than simply miscasting this post as simple criticism of your emulator (as you did at http://dotmobi.typepad.com/dotmobi/2006/08/emulators_mobil.html) and simply ignoring the larger issue I raised surrounding it.
Hey guys .. im really a rookie .. and im on no assignment here .. but what i thought i need to determine, is the flipside of .mobi .. as a TLD .. in it self .. i guess it doesnt really target a specific niche of audience .. and on the one hand it is purely a platform or interface oriented model ..
what im really concernd is abt why and how ICANN gave .mobi’s introduction a nod ..
.mobi im sure most of u are aware , is backed by thirteen major companies including Ericsson, GSM Association, Google, Hutchison, Microsoft, Nokia, Orascom Telecom, Samsung Electronics, Syniverse, Telefonica Moviles, TIM (Telecom Italia), T-Mobile and Vodaphone,
All these Corporations are Massive in their own sense .. But are they really focussed on making the internet a more enriching experience .. or is it just that .. they know that a merger of this magnitude is a sign of the rise of a New Monopoly .. ?
I mean .. In the case of Most Sponsored TLD’s .. it is a merger of organizations which have specific interest in the growth of the sector that they are responsible for.. eg .travel…
but what is ICANNS agenda here .. ?? do they soon want a parallel internet .. ..i mean i agree that the total domain name usage today is approximately 65 million . .but .mobi is a sophisticated technique of gaining an edge over most of the Gtlds … given the solid support .. and a targett audience 4times that of all the other CCTLD’s AND GTLD’s in existance ..
where is the MTLD .. headed .. ??
i dont know who has the answers .. but if any of u happen to think of any .. let me know ..
[...] I’m not going to rehash my point of view on .mobi; I’ve done so plenty before, and plenty of holes have been poked in their plans on other sites as well. Needless to say, I’m not a big fan. And I find their plans to auction off so-called premium domains nothing short of ridiculous. The justification is that the process keeps the domain names out of the hands of “parties who would only sell them on the aftermarket”. These auctions do nothing nothing of the sort; they simply take money that would otherwise be spent in the secondary market and put it in mTLD’s pockets, furthering the opinion that .mobi is little more than a massive moneygrab. [...]