dotMobi

Go West, dotMobi ... T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West Premium Name Auction, Las Vegas

We're prepping for February's T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West Conference in Las Vegas, and for our first 2008 premium name auction to be held there, hosted by Moniker.

We are super excited about the names we are offering this time round: banks.mobi, broadway.mobi, cards.mobi, doctor.mobi, floods.mobi, geneology.mobi, hollywood.mobi, lottery.mobi, naked.mobi, property.mobi, score.mobi, tickets.mobi and – appropriately enough given the venue – vegas.mobi. Oh ... and last, but definitely not least, the highly anticipated porn.mobi will be auctioned.

Our usual content obligations apply, and since these names provide some great development opportunities, I can't imagine anyone not wanting to develop these names.

See Moniker's auction site for details on participating in the auction and see the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West Conference site for more information on the whole T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West event.

Hope to see you all there!

A little late but still pretty cool ...

Around the December holidays, ZAGAT released a short film about the company's adding shopping information to ZAGAT.mobi. And even though it's a little late, I thought you'd be interested in seeing it:

By the way, you'll see Russell Kern from Maxim magzine in the clip, talking about maxim.com. What he doesn't mention in the clip is that there is a very good maxim.mobi site as well.

dotMobi Community Proposal re: Sedo Auction

Over the last six weeks, dotMobi has been working hard to resolve the problems that arose from the 5 December 2007 Sedo auction. As many readers will know, we had re-scheduled an auction replay for 23 January, but this was subsequently postponed due to feedback from the community that this was not the best approach. We are conscious that the community is looking for a speedy resolution to the situation and we share that sentiment. We have a lot of work lined up for 2008; it is going to be an exciting and busy year ahead, and no-one is more eager to move on and get going than dotMobi.

That said, we were faced with a very complex and unique situation that required a lot of our attention and time. At all times, we have acted with the best interests of the community in mind. We have listened to all stakeholders, we have consulted widely and we are now ready to respond.

Online Auction Update: Postponed

As you're likely aware, dotMobi, for a number of reasons, chose to exercise its legal right to void the Sedo-hosted online auction of December 2007.

Since voiding the auction, our goal has been to identify a way forward that is fairest to all and that best facilitates the development of high-quality content for mobile web users. After further review, we have been able to identify some cases where it may be possible to allocate registration tokens without an auction (and without substantial controversy). The remaining names will be included in a new auction.

To resolve as many disputes as possible, dotMobi has postponed the auction previously announced for January 23, 2008. The rules for this new auction have not been fixed, and dotMobi will carefully consider any suggestions from the community with respect to the new auction’s structure. Please feel free to email your suggestions to premium@mtld.mobi.

Improved site building goodness: site.mobi goes 3.0

If you've purchased .mobi domains but haven't gotten around to putting content on them, I think you'll be interested in the just-released verison 3.0 of site.mobi.

site.mobi 3.0 has a batch of new features that will make building your sites even easier and will help you monetize those sites once they're live. Among the most interesting new features are Google AdSense and AdMob for mobile advertising, PayPal and Google Checkout for mobile commerce and mobile RSS for content syndication.

site.mobi also now has SMS and email invitations so you can tell your clients and customers, friends and family, that your .mobi site is live. And be sure to let us know about it, too, for consideration in the dotMobi site showcase.