I haven't expressed much about how I feel about .mobi – months ago I wrote a piece about it, but never finished editing it… Today Carlo wrote a very good piece on .mobi, which I am going to piggyback…
.mobi is not needed. There is no technical reason for it, and there is no user experience reason for it (you can accomplish the same without .mobi), and there is no business reason for it. And the way it's being introduced has much to be desired.
I've read the .mobi guidelines, and they are open to interpretation and that is a problem. And the reason it is open to interpretation is because it is next to impossible to put guidelines around web applications look-and-feel, without hurting innovation and progress.
The .mobi folks are trying to bypass the most important piece in the evolution of the (mobile) web – letting the market, the users, decide what is good or not good. If a mobile website is no good, well, people won't use it. Good websites will do well and will stick around and be examples for new websites. This is not rocket science, and it doesn't need a business model around domain names, look and feel, or certifications.
For those who are thinking about reserving a .mobi domain, doing so 1) is going to possibly SLOW down things for you, your progress and time to market, and 2) there is no real gain on .mobi – as I mentioned before you can accomplish the same goals without .mobi. Why add yet another domain, related costs, and possibly delay your product to market? What is important is your brand-name and company name – why confuse the user with .mobi or similar attached to your name. You want your users to type in your brand-name, or company URL from anywhere, and that yielding good results. What is important is that you use your common sense when developing mobile websites. What is MORE important right now is fixing the out-of-the-box user experience, which has nothing to do with your mobile website or .mobi or URLs, but more with how handsets are configured by default, and with walled-gardens, and hoops users have to jump, and cost at the carrier, to get to the desired website, and things like that.
No need to establish precedence with .mobi. Today we have the .mobi guys pushing their solution, with the best of intentions, but worst of solutions, and tomorrow we may have the .settopbox guys pushing their own URL/domains. And the result is us, the product developers going through hell with bids, and more costs, and time spent and distractions, and the customer confused, having to first think what URL to type based on the device/computer they are using, before going to the site (yes, future mobile browsers may auto-complete the .mobi URL, but that is just masking the real problem).
What gives .mobi folks the right to define what is good or bad experience? Who are they to determine what a difficult navigation, or poorly formatted pages, or inappropriate or excessive content is? It is all relative. No need to impede innovation by restricting the user experience to a predetermined set of ways or guidelines. And it is not their job or role to decide what is good or bad. Let the user and market decide.
.mobi will NOT solve barriers. It will not solve difficult logins, or slow access and long load times (a moot point as network connection speeds are drastically improving), or make things better. It is all common sense anyway. Let's start fixing the user experience from the bottom up, starting at the handsets, and the carriers, and let the web evolve, as it has for the last 16 plus years. Let the normal evolution of the mobile web, and time, take care of how mobile web sites should and will look and feel – believe me, the users, market and time will take care of it.
I only see one positive thing (maybe) with .mobi, but I will cover that in another write-up.
In conclusion, .mobi introduces more harm than good. While the purpose of .mobi is the improve the mobile user experience, which as previously mentioned it can be perfectly accomplished without the need of a .mobi, it does so by introducing restrictions that impede innovation, and that introduces unneeded precedence. It also confuses the user, as well as brand-names.
I predict that .mobimobi.company.com or www.company.com/mobi (the way it should be), .mobi will be just another redirect that over time will become irrelevant.
ceo