Gideon Marken: Web Technologist

I read a blog post over at MoCoNews about Russell Beattie announcing that he feels .mobi domains are a good idea. As you can see from the title of my post, I don't agree. If you follow the link over MoCoNews, you can see my response. Here's a link to Russell's post.

He seems to feel there's a navigation problem, and that adding yet another top level domain to the soup will fix tings. This is quite odd when you consider that the Web has a navigation problem too, and anyone who uses the Web a lot will tell you that more .this and .that doesn't make things better.

Let's now take a look at .mobi - this is a quoted section from their site, and to me, this is written for people who don't completely understand what a domain name is, and by people who are over generalizing their role as those in charge of a top level domain. Beware of those who state they're going to revolutionize things, and always check out who is behind such statements.

Great, you can sit back in confidence - a revolution will happen because a company that manages a top level domain is backed by companies with a lot of money and power. Take note... this is just a domain name - there is 'no' technology here - there is nothing that .mobi brings to the table besides requiring you to tap 9 times on your keypad to type in .mobi.

The folks at .mobi would disagree and point out that they are different, that they do provide something, and most likely point me to a page on their site which states this:

There you have it, the big revolution will be driven by these "Switch On! Guides." What an idea... standards, best practices, tips, guides... wow! That's all you need, just run out and buy another variation of your domain name, ignore the great resources that form on the Web, check out their guides, and you'll have your very own revolution.

Any company that wants a mobile site should follow these 4 steps.

1. Have your developer ’sniff’ the devices accessing your site.
2. Send mobile devices to the mobile site, send others to the Website
3. Run your mobile site as mobile.MySite.com or mob. or m.
4. Make life easy for people, promote ONLY your domain name: MySite.com

There you go - you’ve now maximized the effectiveness of your marketing, PR and even your business cards simply by embracing that which you already own - your domain name.

Who really wants to start promoting to the world that they have a Website at BlahBlah.com and a mobile site at BlahBlah.mobi? When you do this - you are demanding more of these people’s attention - and attention is a key part of our evolving economy.

I’m stating all of this from experience, as I’ve done what I’ve explained here and I can tell you that it’s just a few more hours or days of development for any good developer.

As someone who has both a mobile and a Website, I most definately prefer being able to say:

"Visit us with your computer or mobile, at http://artistserver.com "

Compare that to having to say:

"Visit our Website at artistserver.com or our mobile site at artistserver.mobi "

In an era when it’s difficult to get a piece of people’s attention, do you really want water down your message with two names?

Please… if you are going to launch a mobile site - do it the right way - do it on the server-side as I explained above, create a solution that extends your site/service/brand - not one that divides it.

.mobi, what is it about?

date: 04/10/2006 01:05:19 PM
name: Neil Edwards
url: www.mtld.mobi

I am respectful to your post, but you also need to point out a few other facts. dotMobi was created because the PC-based Internet did not work well on the Internet readily available on the mobile phone for the last several years. The industry (dotMobi's investors and several credible associations) joined forces to create an internet address based upon open standards that provided a better consumer experience. dotMobi is the first internet address that enforces the set of open source standards created by the W3C. No other internet address -- whether dotcom or your local country code -- accomplishes this objective. The end result is a consistent and good experience for the consumer. A more tangible result is that a consumer can always enter "myname.mobi" into their device and always get a consistent reponse. Try your five favorite, local websites and see the results for yourself. dotMobi is all about providing a consumer driven solution based upon open standards of the W3C and other noted standards bodies. An elegant, self-detecting technical solution is not in reach of the everyday small business owner or individual. Hence, fierece industry competitors created dotMobi to solve a common problem. The dotMobi team is always happy to address any comments directly regarding the internet address and the technologies behind the internet address. dotMobi also has an advisory group that any individual or company can join to help shape the future direction of the product.

date: 04/14/2006 04:08:08 PM
name: Gideon Marken
url: gideonmarken.com

Neil,
Thank you for visiting and for your reply.

I was looking forward to reading some of your responses to what I was saying in my post, but it seems you've basically summarized the information from your site.

Since I wrote out a long reply, I've selected to make a new posting from it so others will be able to see it. I'm not sure how many read the comments here :)

Gideon MarkenWeb Technologist & Electronic Artist

Gideon Marken
Web Technologist & Electronic Artist