.mobi Madness, Especially With Prime .mobi Geo Domains
Posted by There has been alot in the news lately about peoples perspective of the .mobi meltdown. I honestly do not understand what all the hype is all about. If a .mobi is bought for $35 and sells for $18,000, I would say that is a pretty good ROI. How is this possibly a bad thing, because it did not sell for $180,000? I think many people in this industry like to hit on confrontational issues on purpose, just to see the reaction they can stir up. Although, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and that is what makes this industry so great. However, this is only my opinion and not the focus of this post.
What is crazy is the .mobi registry itself with geo domains. Apparently, these prime .mobi geo domains have been reserved for government entities, where they must apply to receive the name. In a recent request from an associate to acquire a geo domain from the registry, this is the response given:
As explained on the phone and also in emails to you (and —–) mid last year, we chose to allocate our city .mobi names to Government entities / city authorities. Note that Government entities were able to delegate the task to a local agency or organization and there were / are opportunities for private parties to partner with those entities. In response to this process, we received applications from Zaragoza, Barcelona , Helsinki , Rome , Basel , Salzburg , Madrid and Frankfurt amongst others (note that some of these sites are still in their development phase). Not all of these sites have been announced as the cities are leading on the press releases.http://www.fortunecookie.co.uk/). This is the company behind the WorldMobi venture which was specifically set up for the city names project - you can view their work at http://world.mobi and http://city.mobi although sites are still under development.http://www.worldtravelawards.com/), the world’s only travel awards ceremony. The World Travel Group also produces eleven travel news mag azines [I have attached an example article publicizing the venture] and they are well placed to develop, manage and market the city names programme.
Governments will still be entitled to apply for their city names but in the absence of having received any application for a particular city on the reserved names list, we are allowing WorldMobi to incorporate that city site into their city.mobi / world.mobi portal. If an application is received, it will be queued until the end of each contractual cycle and evaluated at that stage.
I hope this helps explain the process that we are using.However, in order to expedite the roll out of compelling content on the .mobi domain, dotMobi has now chosen to partner with Fortune Cookie (
Fortune Cookie is well known for its high end, corporate web development and is well connected with the BBC. The Chairman of WorldMobi, Graham Cooke, is also the President of the World Travel Awards (
This is pretty amazing that the consumer is not able to develop a .mobi geo domain, but their select partner can and is in the best position to develop great .mobi geo domains. Further, even if a government entity does apply for a prime .mobi geo domain, they are not guaranteed to get it now, because of their new partnership with FortuneCookie.co.uk. Does anyone see anything unethical with this picture?
This is the same thing that happened with the .travel extention and the corruption that has occured since its initial launch. With BS policies to deter consumers from registering .mobi geo domains, and only allowing their “strategic partner” to develop them, .mobi is following the foot prints of .travel. It is amazing that ICANN continues to allow registries to use their extensions designed for the public, to profit from by keeping some of the best for them, without allowing them to be available to consumers first.
Simply amazing. If new registries are going to keep the best for themselves and auction off names during their launch, then are they truly a registry for the people? IMO, they are nothing more than extortionist at best. This is unacceptable and ICANN should enforce new policies to prevent registries from conducting unethical business practices such as these, with fierce fines and punishment for those who abuse the trust they have been given to deliver services to consumers.
james barclay Says:
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