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Should you .mobi your blog?

Should you .mobi your blog?

I’ve been meaning to write something about the .mobi domain name for quite some time. Andrew over at the Web Publishing Blog beat me to it, but I’m not one to be taken aback by things like that. So .mobi is one of those fairly new domain names, meant for the mobile web of course.

It’s also stupid.

First things first. Four letter names suck. Sure, they spell out what it is, just like .com and .biz does, but do I want to have my users hammer out more letters on their mobile phones than is absolutely necessary?

No, of course not. A mobile top level domain name should be two letters, failing that (with the national codes and everything), three. What’s wrong with .mob? Too many mafia jokes, is that what the ICANN (or whoever it was who cracked this idea) is afraid of? In that case, take a lesson from Nintendo – if they can name a videogame system Wii, then .mob is not a problem.

That aside, .mobi is still stupid. Why would I want a separate domain name for my mobile site in the first place, especially today when your .com name is part of the brand? Detect what device the visitor is using, and then deal with it, good people! It’s not hard, it’s even already used. Point your phone to Gmail or Facebook and you’ll see.

Finally, I’d say .mobi is way too late. It might have been something worth considering back in the day when WAP were to change the way we used our mobile phones, surfing the web and taking names, or whatever. Today, the differences between the various devices are blurry at best. I’ve got Opera Mini on my Sony Ericsson mobile phone, and it displays traditional websites with overviews, handling the problem with the small screen that way. I can even get Opera for my Nintendo DS, and other devices are handling these things as well.

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So no, don’t get .mobi for your blog. Don’t bother with it at all, unless you’re extremely afraid that someone will steal your brand name (in case you can always mess with them, if it is your brand that is). Until the people, the actual users, expect a .mobi for websites, this is just money thrown away.

And some money. You can get a .com for $6/year, or whatever, but a .mobi can cost $24/year. No fun at all, if you have 35 domain names and intend to complement each one with a .mobi.

Don’t .mobi your blog. Find a way to deal with mobile users instead. And if you do – other than the famous Alex King plugin – do tell how. This is something blogs are still lacking, mobile support, and something that I hope will evolve in the future.

View Comments (8)
  • “…You can get a .com for $6/year, or whatever, but a .mobi can cost $24/year..”

    Try google…7,99 registration fee for a .mobi without a problem. 2 Whole dollar more than a .com. Wow…..
    And for somebody from sweden that’s a laugh with the current dollar rate.

    Get your facts right..

    Martin

  • .mobi is stupid?

    Wow, well thought out argument – tell me, who do you admire most, Beavis or Butthead…?

    So it’s 4 letters, .co.uk is more keystrokes and that’s the 2nd most popular cctld in the world. And the cost, $24 – if you think they cost that much I don’t believe you’re qualified to dispense domain advice.

    James

  • You Rock!

    Yes, four letter words suck. But 5 letters, like Thord don’t. Is that after the Norse god Thor? Just wondered. Thor had this huge hammer and got to wield that sucker like no one else.

    Speaking of suckers, who would want to blog on a mobile device? I mean, really, who would want to spend all that time, trouble and effort scrolling to non-sense like BlogHerald and having to look at countless ads that mean nothing to nobody but help pay the author his hosting fees. My god Thord, my cell phone or PDA battery would run down its juices just trying to scroll through a site like this or any other bloggish hell. Kind of liked “bogged down in a blog” mentality.

    I mean, I would want to have to look at at I don’t want to look at, or read comments that I care nothing about, and read some nonsense by some author that think his keyboard is the hammer of the gods and has the power to change the universe and protect the good who worship the dot com and destroy the evil doers who pay homage to the dot mobi.

    You could not be 100% more correct in this case.

    So please don’t take your site mobile.

  • A mobi for $24? Only someone very ignorant would quote or pay that reg fee for a mobi today.

    I’m glad you see the foolishness in .mobi, please go tell all these other folks to stop being fools.

    google.mobi
    yahoo.mobi
    msn.mobi
    bmw.mobi
    ferrari.mobi
    foxnews.mobi
    espn.mobi
    disney.mobi
    hsm2.mobi
    bofa.mobi

    I’d give you many, many more but I highly doubt you could handle it.

  • YES.. listen to this guy. Do not buy any .mobi names.. ever. Do not waste your time with that mess.. who wants to type an extra letter in for a domain name extension? I think your time is more valuable than to waste it on that extra key stroke.

    Besides.. That will leave me more to register! Please leave me to my mobi world and go on about your .com business.

    I think I am done explaining the basics of .mobi to people who want to swim against the current. Use it or don’t. The more people who follow your uninformed lead, the more those of us who are developing the mobile web will succeed.

    Before I close.. try hard to pull your head out of the 90’s. We are all moving forward while you eat our dust!

  • .mobi rocks it really is the future of the mobile web and you lazy potatoes are talking about how bad it is when you have to enter an extra letter what if if .com was not .com but rather than .ahole you would still type it why should i type blogherald.com when i can type bh.com you should change your domain because its more than 3 words and it wont succeed

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