dotMobi

dotMobi Grows Up

New week, new start, new office!

The dotMobi team, having outgrown its last space, has taken over some new digs in Dublin's IFSC (International Financial Services Centre) this morning ... just down the street from our previous address. The new accommodation is better equipped to handle our growing staff numbers and, having been around since we opened our first office, I can't help but feel proud that we've come so far (and sentimental at the same time).

Back in November 2005, a team of four dotMobi staff members met and introduced themselves over morning coffee at Café Sol before heading over to a temporary office on Dawson Street. We soon came to learn that we really were in a start-up situation as we headed off in pairs to buy pens and stationary, fax machines, phones etc. Morning journeys were planned with military precision since we had just one set of keys and the absence of a lift and presence of far, far too many stairs left staff and visitors gasping for water on arrival. It was, however, a fun and exciting time and what we lacked in facilities, we made up for in energy and enthusiasm.

Now in our third office, we have settled into rather more serious surroundings with our banking and trading neighbours. Let's hope they don't get too rattled when they hear the whoops of the developer's  daily Wii battles as the team lets off steam at the end of the day before settling into the evening shift. Starbucks is still comfortably close by, although rumor has it that a brand new coffee machine is set to replace the now battered gift offering that saw us through many bright and early starts in our old Exchange Place offices. And, better still, we're all the closer to our favourite "OK, just one drink before I head home" haunts.

Our door is always open for anyone passing by so be sure to drop in if you ever find yourself in Dublin: 2 La Touche House, IFSC, Dublin 1. (Phone numbers remain the same).

Onwards and upwards!

A new era of easy mobilization is coming

In case you haven't seen the press release, today dotMobi announced that it has acquired the IP assets of Mowser, which is a content adaptation engine created by two Bay Area mobile pioneers, Russell Beattie and Mike Rowehl.

Everyone in dotMobi is very excited because having access to this technology will give us ways to let owners of existing PC-based sites quickly and easily utilize those existing assets to create .mobi-compliant sites designed specifically for the needs of mobile web users.

One question I've already heard is, "But won't having a tool that can convert a PC site to a mobile one mean there's no need for a .mobi domain?"

Hertz doesn't think so. Hilton doesn't think so. Amtrak doesn't think so. 1-800-Flowers doesn't think so. And I certainly don't think so.

Those brands (among many others) use similar tools to create .mobi web sites that address the needs of on-the-go users. They've thought about the mobile context and want to assure their users that their sites will work on a mobile phone and that they won't encounter a frustrating desktop PC site (poorly) transferred to a phone.

That's one reason I think that bringing user-controlled content adaptation to "the masses" will be a significant accelerator for .mobi domain usage.

Another reason is that I don’t think businesses will want to hide their mobile sites. Even with all the cool technology we have, it can take a bit of effort to think through and create a great mobile site.

The Nielsen top ten web mobile sites use multiple URL conventions, but .mobi is the one most frequently used to ensure that their sites can be found because brand.mobi is the most easily guessable convention.

So welcome to a new age of easy mobilization ... and more .mobi domains than ever.

How small businesses are thinking really big

In case you didn't get the memo, April 21-25 is National Small Business Week in the U.S., sponsored by the Small Business Association. And while it's true that big brands with big budgets are most visibly promoting how they're using "dotMobi thinking," increasingly big numbers of small businesses are showing leadership in bringing innovative ideas to the mobile web. 

As I heard one panelist describe it at ad:tech last week, the mobile Internet is the "connective tissue" of our technology-driven and busy lives -- keeping us in tune with with the vital functions we need to thrive both personally and professionally. It's no wonder it's forecasted half the world's mobile phone subscribers will be browsing the web in just three years (Informa 2007) ... and 85% of iPhone users already do so. Now is the time for any business owner or marketer to seize the day.

The best mobile web sites acknowledge that we want utility -- usefulness -- out of our mobile web experiences that bring convenience to how we manage our day-to-day lives. Small conveniences immediately translate to customer satisfaction, and that means increased loyalty, and deeper & richer customer relationships. We all know it's far more efficient to keep a customer than to acquire a new one. And in this economic climate, retention needs to be foremost in any marketer's mind -- especially for small businesses who need to be even more judicious with their marketing spend.

And many small businesses are using "dotmobi thinking" to deliver satisfaction to their customers by providing utility - in simple and small ways that just make sense. For example, Heritage Texas Properties in Houston offers a mobile web site for out-and-about prospective property buyers. Accessing their site from your mobile device, you can view Houston listings, get contact information for any of their offices or agents, review local city information like news, weather and dining, and even calculate your estimated mortgage using their mobile-friendly calculator. When someone is in a car and viewing property, these kinds of simple features and useful applications really deliver.

Restaurants are also making small steps towards delivering great experiences. Nottingham's Restaurant & Tavern in popular ski resort Big Bear Lake, California uses their mobile web site to offer hours of operation, the menu, directions from local areas, a calendar of upcoming musical events and a quick link to call them; after all, a phone makes calls, too.  Nottingham's has obviously thought about what their customers want to access while in a boat on the lake, on the chair lift or strolling through town. The content is straightforward, but it's sure to result in lasting relationships with customers.

Both sites also use some best practices from both a technical and marketing perspective. First, they each score a perfect 5 out of 5 on http://ready.mobi for mobile performance, simply meaning the sites will work well on most phones. Second, they each advertise their respective.mobi sites on their desktop web sites! After all, how are your customers going to know you have a mobile web site if you don't tell them? It's important to differentiate yourself as a small business and show you provide this added convenience.

If you have a small business and are ready to establish a mobile web site, I have five tips to get you started:

Say hello to world.mobi

You may remember -- exactly one month ago -- that Caroline Greer mentioned on this blog we'd have exciting news about our portfolio of reserved "cityname.mobi" domains. Well, it's here: say hello to world.mobi, a business partnership between UK-based web-design firm Fortune Cookie and dotMobi.

This partnership lets us bring together the travel-industry expertise of Fortune Cookie and the mobility expertise of dotMobi to create more than 600 sites, utilizing dotMobi's "cityname.mobi" domains for tourists around the world. Fortune Cookie is a heavy hitter in the travel industry with huge marketing reach and impressive resources -- and we are very excited to partner with them in this venture.

world.mobi is an extension of the City Names Application Process. Government entities are still entitled to apply for their city names but, in the absence of any application, world.mobi will provide the relevant city site. This is a major content roll-out, and one that should seal the deal in showing the value of a cityname.mobi site.

The partnership was discussed during part of a World Travel Awards event happening currently in Berlin, but the formal announcement and outreach is planned for a bit later in the spring because the partnership is still finalizing some of the work around world.mobi. In the meantime, Internet Travel News just published an article that will give you a bit more information about the JV and its plans.

If you have an existing or planned cityname.mobi site and would like to discuss becoming part of the world.mobi network of cityname.mobi sites in some way, you can contact world.mobi's general manager, David Ryder, via email.

Android and the Open Handset Alliance

Unless you've been down a mine all week, you'll have seen that Google, one of our investors, announced a new mobile software platform this week. It's called Android and the announcement also revealed the creation of the Open Handset Alliance.

Since we at dotMobi also constitute a mobile consortium of sorts, we thought it would be worthwhile talking about it a little. Certainly there are many facets to making the mobile web experience the success it deserves to be, and so the OHA is very welcome to the party.

The most amazing thing about this announcement was that a 34-company deal was kept so secret. But to be honest, after months of speculation, the rest wasn’t as surprising. The project has even kept the Android name, that of company that Google acquired back in 2005 to start the project.

To dotMobi followers, the big question is how well Android will help the growth and acceptance of the mobile web. Certainly it is set, like the iPhone, to increase the industry buzz and interest around the making the internet a truly mobile medium.

It will be important to see how it will be welcomed by the developers and owners of content, and of course, whether it is set to be a platform that also hits mainstream consumer consciousness, as the iPhone has done.

Whilst OHA plays the "Open" card very strongly, the addition of any new platform into the mobile space creates waves of new diversity, which are not necessarily a good thing in the short term. Nothing becomes de-facto overnight.

Of course, in the longer term, if Android becomes a dominant platform, then diversity diminishes and user experience will increase. (Think of the operating system homogeneity in the PC world, and the relative ease that brings to developers). But that would have to come at the expense of other, dominant market players - many of whom are notably absent from the OHA, and to be fair already have fairly open platforms of their own.

While Google has been able to position itself as a leader in the Internet space – despite what many originally thought was coming to that party a bit too late – there's too much at stake in the mobile world for ubiquity and uniformity to happen overnight, or even smoothly. This dynamic of device diversity is a very particular curse for the mobile space. And, incidentally, why we've been working so hard on mitigating it with our device database initiatives.

So the announcement was interesting and positive. We await further progress with great excitement.

Auction Fever

It is auction fever over at dotMobi right now and in between all the ongoing marketing activity and behind-the-scenes work, we are keenly watching the bidding as the clock counts down on the first Sedo auction of 100 .mobi premium names. The pyschology around auctions is fascinating and no doubt as we get ever closer to 12pm EST on Wednesday 3rd, some of the bidding strategies will really come into play. If you want to be in with a chance at buying one of these great names, head on over to the auction platform and be sure to place your bid!

Stay tuned for news about the next set of Sedo auction names which we will be announcing very shortly and don't forget the Traffic auction next week in Miami when we release another 45 of our premium names!

dotMobi: One Year Later

First of all, hello to everyone. My first blog marks a special occasion in the life of dotMobi.

September 26 was the one-year anniversary of .mobi’s public availability. Although work started well before that date, that day was the public announcement that dotMobi was no longer a concept, idea or project. It was real. And one year later, there are 700,000 names registered with millions of pages of mobile content behind them, plus a slew of free tools for bringing content to the mobile web content like dev.mobi, ready.mobi, site.mobi and the dotMobi Web Developer Guide.  Much progress made, but much, much more to go!

Today, dotMobi’s challenge is to grow what was launched a year ago. Over the next two quarters, dotMobi will focus on growing mobile services for developers, designers and enterprises with the launch of key products like our device database and search services.

Another challenge for dotMobi is helping more and more brands bring their presence to the mobile web. Recently, we’ve seen strong brands like Wachovia, ESPN, Zagat and Disney bringing mobile properties to the .mobi domain. We’ve also seen innovative business models like MobilePropertySites.com, Zinadoo and dozens of other travel, automobile & media sites basing their services on the advantages of the .mobi domain.

I promise that there is much more to come.  This coming year is going to be an exciting one as we all help bring the mobile web to the mainstream … and I'm including every reader of this blog in that.

I know you have an interest in the success of the mobile web. If you have domains, use site.mobi to build content. Create mobile social networks with your friends using Zinadoo. If you have friends in businesses, introduce them to the benefits of the .mobi domain. Advertising works. PR works. But word of mouth will always be the most important way to reach a mass audience because it’s supported by your credibility and enthusiasm.  You have had and will have a big hand in impacting the growth of dotMobi, so thank you for your support in the past, and thank you for working beside us to build the future.

I'm already excited to think about a year from now, when we’ll be looking back at everything the dotMobi community has accomplished together over these next 12 months. I promise it will be exciting for you as well.

Back to the Block

You may have seen something in your RSS aggregators this morning about Moniker's Domain Name Auction at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East 2007, and dotMobi's participation in it.

It's true.

Following two successful T.R.A.F.F.I.C. auction appearances over the past year, dotMobi is making a select group of 45 domains from our Premium Names List available via auction.

On Friday, October 12, dotMobi will release a select group of .mobi domains at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. EAST 2007 in live and silent auctions hosted by Moniker. Among the specific names that will be available are dvd.mobi, cash.mobi, debt.mobi, food.mobi, recipe.mobi, elections.mobi, irs.mobi, diet.mobi, email.mobi, podcast.mobi, rss.mobi, move.mobi, rap.mobi, face.mobi, who.mobi, buy.mobi and usedcars.mobi.

As an aside, you will see scores.mobi on the Moniker list; that is a private auction name and not part of the 45 dotMoi Premium Names to be on auction.

These names join the almost 700,000 .mobi domains that have been registered since dotMobi's General Registration commenced a year ago on October 11, 2006.

But what about content ...?

Ready.mobi 2.0 and more news from the weekend

Some notable news from over the weekend.

1.  Ready.mobi 2.0 released. 

James Pearce, dotMobi's CTO, has done it again. He just launched the next generation of Ready.mobi.  I cannot still believe we offer this for FREE! I am joking, of course, and we have no plans to start charging money. 

If you own a website or if you are a developer building mobile websites, then you need to analyze your current website with Ready.mobi 2.0. One of the best features is that you can now crawl every page of your site. Check it out ... more than 4,000 other people are doing so daily. Type in Ready.mobi today.

I am not going to steal James' thunder because he will explain why Ready.mobi 2.0 is so significant.  More to come from James later in the blog this week.

2.  WIPO Report Released. 

I would not recommend the WIPO report for bedtime reading; however, it is significant because it is the post mortem on the dotMobi Sunrise, Landrush and Premium Names launch program. The net-net: dotMobi ran a good launch and continues to have good, sound business practices. We looked out for the needs of domain buyers, trademark holders, and developed an easy launch for our resellers. The credit for this good success goes to Caroline Greer and outside advice from Becky Burr, Mike Palage, and our friends at Afilias. The more important footnote is that dotMobi's management team and board of directors run a world-class company with business practices that stand the test of outside scrutiny.  dotMobi is a long-term play that will be around in the coming years. It is good to see an outside party say "well done" in a very tricky subject area. We will have the report available on the website this week. 

3.  Enterprise Ireland Funding

dotMobi will soon announce that we have won grants for the development of two of our key projects from the Irish Government's Enterprise Ireland division. A press release will follow shortly on the funding. dotMobi had to go through a rigorous business plan and technical audit on these projects.  Again, dotMobi has been voted by an outside party to be delivering new and innovative technologies for the mobility industry. It  underscores the point that dotMobi is not just a domain name company.  dotMobi is developing some of the core technologies that will make content work in the mobile world. We are the epicenter for mobility -- that no one can dispute. A job well done to Norbert Grey and James Pearce, who led this effort and continue to guide dotMobi forward.

From Burger King to Building Mobile Sites

I came across some really comical blogs on the NamePros site during the past weeks commenting that "Edwards should be flipping burgers at Burger King" and "Edwards is that guy with the really bad red tie." I love flipping burgers on the grill, but I have to say that I do like my red tie. I love the good craic as we say here in Ireland, but I think the discussion needs to be more about how to build mobile content. You can buy all the names in the world that you want, but they are worthless without content and traffic to them. Content and traffic are important whether you are an individual, big brand, small brand or domain investor.

The big brands are doing it daily in the press. dotMobi is about helping the small and big brands alike to reach 1.6 billion internet-ready mobile phones around the world. This is where the future traffic lies for small businesses, big brands and pay-per-click sites. If you are not there today, then you are going to be late to the game in the next 12 months. I am often asked what are the minimum requirements for a dotMobi site and, more importantly, what makes a good dotMobi site.

The minimum requirements for any web site behind a mobi name are brain-dead simple. Most registrars and their tools implement these requirements today. We built the minimum mandatory rules with help from the W3C and dotMobi's investors so that consumers would get a mobile experience that works every time. You can run a Ready.mobi report to find out if your site meets the three simple rules. If you want to build a site with GOOD mobile content, then you need to do a little more work and read on past the rules below. 

The three rules are:

1.  XHTML Mobile Profile

XHTML mobile profile is simply a tag for your mobile landing page, signifying that your site does XHTML (the preferred language for mobile web browsers). It makes sense that your web site should tell the browser to select a mobile display. Mobile browsers will take on a number of behaviors, and your web site should signal what kind of behavior it wants the consumer to experience. This rule is mandatory and .mobi sites not implementing it will be turned off with due notice before the year end.

2.  No frames

The zero to nine keypad on mobile phones do not provide an easy way for a consumer to navigate around a mobile web site. Frames also tend to break mobile browsers in some cases. Hence, we have a mandatory rule that says no frames because it produces a bad mobile experience for the consumer. This rule is mandatory, and .mobi sites not implementing it will be turned off with due notice before the year end.

3.  myname.mobi must be the landing page

This is another practical rule guaranteeing consumers that they do not have to worry about what comes before the name. Was it "www" or "whatever 3rd level name"? Mobile consumers on the go do not have time to type lots of characters on a zero-to-nine key pad. dotMobi makes it simple for the mobile consumer to get to the site they want quickly and dependably. We did research on this mobile consumer behavior, by the way, and this is how we created the rule. This rule is mandatory, and .mobi sites not implementing it will be turned off with due notice before the year end.

The three rules are simple and practical, but they do not mean you will produce a mobile site with a great consumer experience. dotMobi and the investors (the guys with the real mobile web experience) have literally spent the last two years and several million dollars building information resources and tools for free to the global community. You should check out Dev.mobi today to learn about how to build a web site with a great mobile experience. 

I will summarize some of the highlights that will help you build a world class mobile site that will work on any phone or network in the world ...