What a Great Thing

We’ve always been big fans of zagat.mobi and now there’s a 30-second reason why we just love it.

Apple recently launched its "The Great Thing" TV commercial featuring some of the great things you can do with the Internet in your pocket. Featured along with viewing a trail map at a ski resort and changing your flight, is finding a good place to eat on Zagat.mobi.

The site looks really sharp within the iPhone and not to be ignored is the fact that the spot very clearly displays "zagat.mobi" in the address bar.

Take a look at the ad:

Like we said we months ago, we think the iPhone is simply awesome -- mostly because unlike anything else before, it has people talking about the mobile web. One year ago most people wouldn’t know mobile web from WiFi but now it’s becoming part of everyday parlance thanks to that little touch screen you can pinch and grab.

And what about some of the cynics that said .mobi had no place in an iPhone world? I love pointing to zagat.mobi as the perfect example of how even great technology cannot replace customer-focused thinking and smart branding. If you’ve had the pleasure of using the zagat.mobi site, you’ll know it’s not a shrunken-down, miniature version of its .com counterpart. It has unique attributes, content, and layout that cater to my specific needs while using a mobile phone. For example, the phone numbers are hyperlinked so I can directly call the restaurant and book a table. And when using it from the iPhone, it knows where I am and provides a map and directions. Now this is giving the people what they want!

And having a .mobi domain is like having bragging rights to say "Yes, I get the mobile web! I'm about to give you a very cool experience that's different from what you get at your PC." Now, thanks to these 30 seconds, millions of people are hearing that message from zagat.mobi.

Speaking of spreading the word ...

.... our investors are doing a great job, too

Ericsson is now including “ericsson.mobi” in their standard press release boilerplate text -- and they’ve already done more than 20 global press releases this month.

Not to be outdone, nokia.mobi and nokiaforbusiness.mobi are now embedded as default pages for the majority of new Nokia phones. That’s helping Nokia achieve more than 130,000,000 hits per month on those two sites alone.

So whether it’s in a TV commercial during the latest episode of House or as the default page on a newly opened Nokia N95, high quality .mobi sites are receiving unprecedented new levels of visibility -- and THAT is indeed a very good thing.

Comments

[Dave Future]

I guess this should be good for the new 'Dash Express' car sat nav device?
Could anyone confirm this please?

[Vance Hedderel, Director of PR and Communications, dotMobi]

While I can’t say that dotMobi has been working directly with Dash Navigation (yet), we’re working with brands across the world to ensure that their .mobi sites exhibit “.mobi thinking” and address the issues of users in the mobile context (or, to be less formal about that phrase, “on the go users.”)

On that level, the Dash Express makes sense as a place where a .mobi site would be more useful than a standard PC-based .com site since it’s an extension of mobile internet accessibility.