Remember me talking about mobile friendly m dot websites the other day? Well, the "industry" has gone the other way and launched a new top-level domain, .modi (or dotmobi). The purpose of dotmobi is to make it easier for mobile web users to find mobile content and to give them some assurance that the sites they visit are optimised for a mobile web experience.
However, despite a bit of PR effort and a swish website complete with a blog, not everyone is switched on to dotmobi. Mr WWW, Tim Berners-Lee, has made it clear he is not a supporter of dotmobi as he believe it will fragment the Web. The W3C also presented some arguments against dotmobi back in 2004 as they saw it as "Inconsistent with Device Independence Principles". On a more practical level, someone points out that dotmobi is just another domain to remember and needs more keypresses than .com.
Either way, don't get too excited just yet - from the few example dotmobi sites out there the dotmobi experience is looking pretty dotboring. If dotmobi continues on the basis of the lowest common denominator then it may be a case of too little too late as mobile technology power and screen resolution increases over time. As always, only time will tell - this pragmatic approach to mobile content could be a winner in the long run.
Tags: dotmobi, mdot, mobile content
Saturday 27 May 2006
Talking up dotmobi
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I agree, it is a bit too early to say whether there will be a dotmobi economy parallel to the dotcom economy. But let's remember this: the fundamental reason for excitement is that number of mobile phones is fast outstripping the number of PCs ( by 4:1 !). The effort certainly appears worth the risk when you consider the potential returns
ReplyDeleteI already saw a site Mobinomy.com that appears to be a dotcom directory for all dotmobi sites - see Mobinomy - Directory for the DotMobi Economy
We live interesting times
Narsi @ BPO Database Online
Thanks Narasimhan and good luck with your Mobinomy directory site.
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