Market bullish on our first Premium Name auction

We attended the TRAFFIC East Conference in Miami this week and offered nine names from our Premium List during the live auction. The TRAFFIC conference is one of the world’s premier gatherings of domain name professionals. Many of these "domainers" are entrepreneurial; some are major corporations. Both are looking to develop content and leverage the power of domain names to generate revenue and to direct commerce between buyers and sellers of popular products and services over the Internet

This was the first time that I am aware of that a top-level domain registry has tested an initial offering of names direct to the public in a live auction setting. The names we auctioned were celebs, wow, gossip, stockquotes, flowers, hot, party, laugh and fun.

Some names did OK, but two did very well: fun.mobi earned $100,000 and flowers.mobi went for $200,000. That means dotMobi will have two entries in the top 20 domain sales for 2006.

The results indicate that the market believes in the mobile Internet and is bullish on our approach to improving the mobile browsing experience and eventual traffic that flows from such an improved experience. We look forward to working with the organizations and individuals that successfully bid for this first batch of premium names to generate relevant content to mobile Internet users.

Comments

[peter Balestrieri]

i am curious as to who purchased the 100,000 and 200,000 dollar dotMobi names. i am aware of who purchased the $200,000 one (an exec in the domain business) who was the other person?
thanks

[Eric Timinski]

Hi, I am bullish on .mobi and have purchased name names already. I plan on agressively developing a name soon. I am a believer in .mobi but have the following question.

Looking at live.mobi Microsoft lits live.com as a beta version. Why doesn't Microsoft use live.mobi?

Thanks

Eric

[Pinky Brand]

Peter,
Our press release from yesterday states the buyer of flowers.mobi was Rick Schwartz, who has been in the domain name business for quite some time and wants to build a mobile site for flowers. I can't say that a person actually purchased fun.mobi as opposed to a company, but once the auction transaction is finalized the registrant info for that name will appear in our WHOIS.

[Pinky Brand]

Eric, regarding your question "Why doesn't Microsoft use live.mobi?"

The Microsoft Online Services Group (Windows Live and MSN) has not formally launched its .MOBI marketing efforts to consumers. In the future you will see reference to the .MOBI Trust Mark on the Windows Live and MSN web sites and marketing initiatives to let consumers know that the various Windows Live service for mobile are .MOBI enabled and will support the best user experience offered by being .MOBI compliant.

[Juan M. Piñera]

After having your first auction at Traffic and coming away with such a succesful selling of premium names what are Mobi's plans to stay true to their promise and prevent cyber-squatting? While Mobi is busy selling premuims names to the highest bidder there are those who have not even created any content for their sites and plan to sell them to the highest bidder. What is Mobi doing to stop this? I thought the mission statement of mobi was that they were not going to be another dot com. I am still waiting to see the sirens of the Mobi police. If a registrar has no intention of ever building content why are they allowed to sell their name?

[Pinky Brand]

Juan, in response to your comment and question:

It sounds like you are confusing cyber-squatting with speculative (domaining) activity. The two are not necessarily the same, although it is possible that some domainers may be bad apples and engage in cyber-squatting activity. Cyber-squatting is an activity that can be partially rectified via the UDRP or other legal processes. Domaining activity, which is what I think you are referring to here, is not illegal nor contrary to dotMobi’s terms and conditions of registration.

While we do have three very simple rules about what a .mobi web site must do once it is live in order to ensure a consistent end-user experience (see our Switch On! Guide), there is no requirement that a publicly registered .mobi name resolve to any page, parked or otherwise, upon registration. There is also no requirement that any specific type of content be published, except there may be certain content obligations and restrictions placed on selected dotMobi Premium Names that we expect to allocate in 2007 and 2008 via various methods, including RFP and auction. (One of the objectives of our separate Premium Names allocation process is to increase the likelihood that these domain names will more promptly provide the mobile community with new features and services.)

It’s no secret that every TLD has its share of speculators. That is a fact of life in the current domain name business ecosystem. Those who registered names during our Land Rush and ongoing General Registration process are free to sell names and transfer registrations to any willing buyer provided they are within the law and our terms and conditions. But as with all registered .mobi names, we are willing to work with registrants to help them develop mobile specific content---and that goes even for those that may currently be engaged in speculative buying or selling. Our focus has always been and continues to be about creating an environment that makes any mobile device as useful as a PC for browsing and data services. One way we are doing that is by offering free tools and resources like the dotMobi Emulator and the wonderful MobiReady Report to encourage the development of proper mobile content. Check out http://dev.mobi to learn more. By the way, we are observing new .mobi sites with great mobile-specific content going up every day. You can find out more about some of these by visiting our web site http://dotmobi.mobi .