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.
Better still, it doesn’t even follow .mobi’s much-touted rules that are supposed to ensure all the content on the domains is mobile-friendly. It fails the W3C Best Practices checker, and it doesn’t even pass .mobi’s “Mobi Ready Report”, since it (of course) isn’t XHTML-MP. .mobi has all sorts of compliance policies users of the domain are supposed to follow, and if they don’t eventually the domain will get suspended. Wonder if that process has yet started for flowers.mobi, or if a $200,000 payment gets you out of that sort of thing, because after all, that’s what’s really important here, isn’t it?
Forget everything about helping the mobile user — it’s all about the money. The folks from mTLD can talk about their altruism until they’re blue in the face, but their claims still ring hollow. Their implementation of .mobi does nothing for the mobile web, it just lines their pockets. Why else would they auction sites off to a bunch of domainers, then have the audacity to claim with a straight face that they’re actually going to use the sites for relevant mobile content, not for their usual tricks like domain parking. But as long as mTLD gets the $200K, who cares?
.mobi is a joke, in theory but especially in practice, and it’s getting ridiculous. But the fact that they’ve sold more than 260,000 domains means mTLD is laughing all the way to the bank. Once again, I’m left wondering why such reputable companies and industry leaders as Ericsson, the GSM Association, Nokia, T-Mobile, Telefonica and Vodafone can put their names on this and abide by it.
A snippet from flowers.mobi - “We specialize in Flowers Delivered, Alaska State Flower, Asian Adult Movie, Buy Flowers Online, Dallas Flowers, and an array of other products and services.”
Spot the odd one out…
Stuff like this makes .mobi look like a joke, but I wonder if their rules say they can suspend the domain-shark off and keep his money? If so, I’d give them high marks for deviousness
Hey Carlos,
Take a doggie downer. I just got the domain transferred to me a few days ago. Give a guy a chance to get his ducks in a row before you go around blasting people. If you don’t like .mobi nobody is forcing you to buy one. Do I have to do things on YOUR time table. Who are you?
So be patient and in a few days you will see a compliant site. Thanks in advance for your understanding.
Hey Ricks,
I can’t wait to see what an XHTML-compliant parked domain looks like!
With baited breath,
your friend Carlo
There’s at least one useful .mobi site: http://wapedia.mobi/en/
[...] My biggest mobile annoyance of the year (and this will certainly be a surprise to regular readers): .mobi. It’s a joke and a money grab. Any potential value I could see in it on a theoretical level is destroyed by the way it’s being administered. And in case you were wondering, the high-dollar flowers.mobi domain still isn’t compliant with .mobi’s rules, and is still nothing more than a useless parked domain. [...]
How very fascinating. 4 months and that domain still has to change.