Is dotMobi a marketing exercise?

A friend called me today with a question whether he should rush to register a '.mobi' domain or not.

This prompted me to check what’s going on with the dotMobi thingy and turned out that they’ve just announced a general availability of '.mobi' domain names.

Now, I would not engage in a question of whether or not it is a scam, but what interests me is: what’s the point?

There are 3 points that dotMobi initiative is making:

1) They kinda herd the “mobile adapted” content into a separate domain
2) They develop guidelines on how this content should be developed to be optimally presented on mobile devices
3) Combination of the first two: they enforce that '.mobi' sites adhere to the guidelines

Let’s look at these points:

Point (1) – theoretically there’s nothing wrong with designating a dedicated domain for specifically designed content, except:

1) It kind of implies that all other domains will not be adapted to mobile device presentation.

While it is absolutely true that other domains do not guarantee that the content will be viewable on your mobile phone, still it could be pretty well adapted. I personally do not like this implied limitation. As everybody knows, Opera mobile browser does a pretty good job in adapting content to mobile screen. Also, there are and will be people who adapt their existing sites or applications to mobile presentation, and they probably also will not like the '.mobi' implied exclusivity.

2) There is no guarantee that sites in '.mobi' domain will come up with content compatible with all mobile devices, though the chances will be much higher. Anyone who participated in OMA test fests can attest to that. Will dotMobi verify and approve (i.e. enforce) that the sites stick to the guidelines? They mandate it, but enforcement is another matter entirely.

Point (2) – There is also nothing wrong with developing guidelines and best practices for mobile domain. My problem is that their guidelines are mostly copied from W3C Mobile Web Initiative.

Now, we already have W3C Mobile Web Initiative, W3C Device Independence, and OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) Browsing standard, which overtook the now obsolete Wap Forum. Why do we need another set of guidelines, which is basically copied from existing ones?

I would say any serious developer will probably first check the target mobile phones browsing guidelines (one for each phone manufacturer), then come up with a set of standards to adhere to (which would most likely be xHTML Mobile Profile anyway with a possible look at OMA Browsing), then look up W3C Mobile guidelines to do usability sanity check.

And now the most curious thing of all: '.mobi' does not really adhere to their own (or should I say W3C) guidelines. Specifically, in section "4.2.5 User Input" of the "dotMobi SwitchOn Guide" we read the following :

"[W3C MINIMIZE_KEYSTROKES] Keep the number of keystrokes to a minimum."

Ok, try to input ‘mobi’ into the browser using your mobile keyboard.

‘m’ = 6 (good), ‘o’ = 666 (not good at all), ‘b’ = 22 (also not very good), ‘i' = 444 (well …). So folks, it’s gonna be 9 strokes in all. Factor in that on majority of mobile phones, after hitting ‘m’ you will have to wait couple of seconds for the input to sink in before hitting the same key (6) again three times for ‘o’. Otherwise your initial ‘m’ will change to ‘n’ and you will have to start over.

Now, just to type in ‘.net’ will require only five strokes (66338) and ‘.tw’ only two (89).

Point (3): Also good point in itself. While the use of the guideline is mandated:

"Compliance with mandatory rules is one of the terms and conditions of using a .mobi domain"

it is not clear how this rule will be enforced and how exactly a candidate site will be verified.

So, while there are some valid points behind the dotMobi theory, it pretty much looks as a marketing excercise to me.

I personally will not be registering any .mobi domains any time soon. What about you?

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