Looking at .mobi

Kudos to Vance Hedderel, Director of PR & Communications for dotMobi for posting this comment on my somewhat vocal .mobi .sucks .eggs post:

I’m always surprised by the vehemence people express in regards to the perceived effort in typing “.mobi”; I suspect you will start to see mobiles with “.mobi” programmed in the interface, so the typing issue — if it is an issue — becomes moot.

However, in the comments above, I’m more surprised by Shawn McCollum’s comment that he’s “worried that mobi will become a large walled garden.”

We’ve talked about this on in our blog’s “Misconceptions” series (see http://dotmobi.typepad.com/dotmobi/misconceptions/index.html). The short answer: (1) the freeform address entry required to enter a .mobi URL is the antithesis of a walled garden, (2) the business model of a walled garden of content and services has not worked (think AOL) and (3) of the 13 investors in mTLD, only three are mobile operators — the rest are device manufacturers, service operators and software companies, none of whom stand to gain from a walled garden.

I’m prepared to keep my mind open to the potential of .mobi. Vance taking the time to post this comment certainly prompts me to redress my viewpoint.

So, sitting back… what really bothers me about it?

Well. The fact that my mother knows ‘.com’ and ‘.co.uk’ back to front. It is ubiquitous. I don’t like the re-education requirement.

However, the other perspective is the required re-education could be quite productive. I can actually imagine one friend saying ‘.mobi??? What’s that?’ and having another lay friend say, ‘ah, that’s the mobile one.’ I recognise that could be valuable.

I always thought the natural extension should have been .mob. But as has been muted here before, ‘mob’ isn’t that conducive to legal and commercial activities. ‘Mobi’ is a bit friendlier.

The extension grates on me — together with the believe that I think content should be dynamically repurposed for any device irrespective of domain name.

But, ok. I get it. I buy it. Still uncomfortable with it.

Ok Vance. You challenged me and I can’t actually think of a better alternative. I am warm to .mobi.

If ewan.mobi is free, I’ll have it….