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.
It’s a cunning plan, and one that’s worked like a charm:
The first set of nine dotMobi Premium Domain Names were auctioned via
Moniker.com during the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East domain conference on October 27,
2006, and achieved record results for a new TLD (top level domain). Selling
for $200,000 and $100,000, flowers.mobi and fun.mobi respectively, are
among the top 20 domain sales for 2006 - unprecedented for a newly
introduced TLD (top level domain).
They’ve even got a nice quote from the guy that bought flowers.mobi, saying his company “looks forward to launching the world’s first mobile site for flowers and becoming a dominant force in this new space.” His name? Rick Schwartz.
I’m sure this is just a coincidence, but “Rick Schwartz” also happens to be the name of a guy who anointed himself the “Domain King” several years ago, and made $20 million reselling domain names, including $1.32 million on men.com. This appears to the same guy who claimed in a 2005 Business 2.0 article that he makes $2 million a year from domain parking, and who also sits on the board of the World Association of Domain Name Developers — the very group that puts on the domainer trade show T.R.A.F.F.I.C East at which .mobi held its auctions.
Like I said, I’m sure this is just a coincidence and these two people just happen to share the same name. But if not, and the buyer of flowers.mobi does turn out to be the same Rick Schwartz that a simple Google search shows is a well-known and experienced domainer, it would seem to completely undermine mTLD’s claims that their motives are so pure, that they’re not interested in the money, and are holding these auctions as a means to equitably distribute .mobi domains. These claims weren’t convincing before; with each press release mTLD sends out, they get less and less credible.
[tags]mobile, mtld, .mobi, dotmobi, tld, domains[/tags]
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Interesting…
Yeah, when I read about the auction, I had a similar reaction.
All this reinforces how I feel about .mobi, and the scheme… Something here doesn’t smell right….
ceo
Yes, the buyer of flowers.mobi was Mr. Rick Schwartz, one of the TRAFFIC
event organizers. I met with Rick immediately after he purchased
flowers.mobi and asked him what he planned to do with it. He said he
wants develop a mobile site for flowers. dotMobi plans to offer whatever
assistance we can to make sure he is successful with his plans.
Rick knows — as do the others that successfully bid for the 9 dotMobi
Premium Names at TRAFFIC — that dotMobi is serious about developing
relevant content for the mobile Internet.
dotMobi is not only about domain name registration; it’s about
developing relevant content and a consistent user experience when
searching for and utilizing mobile content. dotMobi won’t be successful
unless the .mobi TLD becomes the name that powers the mobile Internet
browsing experience. Our investors know it, we know it, and I made darn
sure the domainers knew it before, during and after TRAFFIC.
As I’m sure you know, anyone who is serious in developing a new global
business model looks at all marketplaces and tests their products and
services in various situations and audiences, and we plan to do so as
well at dotMobi. The live auction of 9 dotMobi premium names at TRAFFIC
was a test for us. We plan on testing various other processes, venues
and audiences in which to offer future batches of premium names.
As another example, on November 6, dotMobi announced our next test — a
Request for Proposals (RFP) process. This is an opportunity for serious
individuals or organizations to tell us about themselves, their
capabilities, and what they would do with certain dotMobi Premium Names
should we select their proposal.
dotMobi is offering news.mobi, ringtones.mobi, sports.mobi and weather.mobi
via the RFP process. You can learn more about this and download the RFP
application at http://dotmobi.mobi.
Be sure and let us know when that site is up and running, since Schwartz doesn’t really have a track record for this sort of thing.
But you really think that auctioning domains off to a bunch of domainers — people whose business is profiting from domain names by either reselling them, or from domain parking, which is hardly “relevant content” — will ensure they build legitimate sites with them? How can you argue that with a straight face?
Hi
I am confused about one thing guys: why hasn’t .mobi advertised there standard website domains for phones yet?
Is it because the hardware(mobile phones) need to be updated?
There should have been a big media thing about .mobi as its the std for mobile devices why i ask isnt it?
Please help me understand this?
Have investors not pumped money into .mobi?
why is their a halut and .mobi isnt advertising like mad on tv, the web etc for websites etc???
please help me understand this?
How will they improve the the current mobile phone sites?
at teh oment wap is provided by the individual companies: vidafone, bt cellnet, orange etc ( hence i live within the uk)
please let me know guys
kind regards
Jamil
[...] My message to web developers is: Forget about .mobi madness and just start treating your audience with the same amount of respect as you do on the fixed web. When I started building websites (and I stopped really quickly because I wasn’t very good) I was taught a couple basic rules: [...]
[...] At the end of October, the .mobi folks touted the success of their first domain auctions — the auctions that are supposed to be an equitable way of distributing domain names, and keep them out of the hands of “parties who would only sell them on the aftermarket”. They managed to sell flowers.mobi for $200,000 to the self-anointed “Domain King”, but an mTLD representative assured us in the comments that the domainer wanted to “develop a mobile site for flowers”, before again trying to deflect the criticism that all mTLD is doing is a moneygrab, and that their claims about advancing the mobile internet are nothing more than a smokescreen. Well, flowers.mobi has gone live, and — wouldn’t you know it — it’s not a “mobile site for flowers”, it’s just a typical parked domain filled with ads. [...]
[...] Link: .mobi Auctions Raise More Questions Than They Answer at MobHappy [...]