dotMobi auctions top ten domains - reaction

Every day I get quite a few anonymous tips and comments sent in via the Anonymous Tip Form. Most are heresay, nearly all are thoroughly entertaining and almost without exception, unpublishable.

This evening though, I received this comment sent in by someone who is described as a ‘top industry insider’. The comment was prompted by a story published today on Fierce Wireless regarding dotMobi’s auctioning of some domain names.

The comment begins thus:

according to the fiercewireless post, dotMobi are ‘auctioning’ off the top 10 domain names (as they see them)..

[quoting the Fierce Wireless piece] ‘We’ve been tracking the top-level domain name company dotMobi since its launch earlier this year, now the firm is auctioning off ten premium domain names: celebs, cheaptickets, flowers, fun, gossip, hot, laugh, party, stockquotes and wow.’

Is it April Fool’s?

dotMobi is already the single most stupid concept ever thought up, but this, if it’s true, is just plain special.

Why couldn’t the people who so fiercly pushed and set up dotMobi have spent their time looking at standardisation of handset application software – java/brew etc, or heaven forbid – lobby the carriers to sort out the total rip off that is data rates. Two issues that are infinitely more critical to the success of the mobile/web convergence than the bollocky waste of time dotMobi is..

so there.

I left the language in there because I thought it was justified as a rather emotive example of how strongly this person feels. I get the concept of dotMobi, particularly after Vance (dotMobi Director of PR & Communications) took some time to set out his perspective on SMS Text News recently — but at the same time, I think a focus on handset standardisation and silly data rates would be eminently useful.

I’d welcome your perspective on the above viewpoint. I’ve also invited Vance or a colleague to respond.