REMINDER: Develop, Develop, Develop! "If you build it, they will come."

[Andres Kello]

Dear Fellow Mobiers,

Development is the single most important factor in the success of .mobi, and therefore your .mobi investment. To put it bluntly, if you're not developing your .mobi's, then you're hurting .mobi and therefore your own investment. Do not wait for a big player to adopt and promote .mobi, you cannot control that. Focus on what you can control.

Don't sit on the sidelines, be pro-active. It doesn't matter what you develop, it could be a simple 1-page site with basic information, but at least it's something, someone, somewhere will see when they visit your .mobi on a mobile phone. Those relying on parking are playing the game backwards. Parking requires traffic. Traffic requires .mobi awareness. .mobi awareness requires development. Don't start on the wrong side or you'll be working against .mobi and against your investment. Obviously, many of us are simply "domainers" who have several hundred .mobi's and it's very hard for us to develop ALL of them, but that's no excuse for us not to start somewhere and develop our .mobi's one by one. Better to move slowly then not at all. Don't sit on your investment, make it work for you, not against you.

It's simple. We're in a race to develop the most mobile content. If .com's beat us to it with their simple auto-detect-and-redirects, and the consumers begins to realize that .com's are displaying just fine on their mobiles, we will have lost the game, our investments will be worth only a fraction of what they are today, and consumers will have lost a great opportunity for a better, simpler, and easier mobile solution. But if we show the world that .mobi is the biggest and most relevant extension for mobiles by ensuring that there are many, many more developed .mobi's than anything else for mobiles, then .mobi will be able to solidify its position as the defacto standard of the mobile internet. At that very moment, our investments will skyrocket.

I know many of you are not professional developers. Heck, neither am I. But that's why we're here, to help each other make the most of our .mobi's, and that includes development. Development can only ADD value to your domain, so if you don't want to develop for .mobi, then develop because you want to ensure and increase the value of your portfolio. If you don't want to develop a particular name, then sell it to someone who will, it will be better for your overall investment in the long term. I never developed a mobile website until I registered my first .mobi. Now take a look at the first .mobi I developed: Banking.mobi (http://banking.mobi/). Is it some sexy high-tech banking portal that connects you directly to your bank account allowing you to make instant, seamless mobile money transfers to anyone, anywhere in the world? Not yet, but at least it's something. For now, it's a just a simple site listing mobile banking sites around the world...but it's a hell of a lot better than hosting parking ads for sites that aren't even optimized for mobile phones. Best part is, it took me only a couple of hours to do using mTLD's .mobi template (http://pc.mtld.mobi/community/content_devforum.html). If I can do it, ANYONE can, I can't stress that enough. In fact, that's the beauty of .mobi, the sites you create are a lot smaller than normal websites, making development a lot faster and easier, yet we have a potential market size that is 4 times greater. How's that for an advantage? There is absolutely no excuse.

So don't wait for the big guys to develop theirs. Big corporations are notorious for being bureaucratic and moving very, very slowly to adopt and embrace new technologies. Be a pioneer in this market, learn the ropes, develop yours now, and enjoy the ride! Imagine what the pioneers of the original internet felt like in the early 90's...I was too young to be a part of that, but now we ALL have a shot at experiencing the very same thing and helping to create a new market that will revolutionize the way the world does just about everything.

Let this sticky thread be a constant reminder of the critical need to develop, that's why I'm placing it in the Discussion forum. At worst, it'll make you feel guilty for not developing your .mobi's which might eventually get you to develop some of your .mobi's. :) At best, it'll make everyone get into the mobile development mood and start cranking out delicious mobile content. To those of you already developing (and there are several), thank you for increasing the value of my, and your, investment.

Mobility.mobi is pro-.mobi, and therefore pro-development.

Can't wait to see the houses you build...

Cheers,
Andres

P.S. As I mentioned in another forum, I won't wish you guys good luck with your .mobi's because the success of .mobi won't depend on luck. It will depend on development.


Added Nov. 22, 2007 from this thread (http://mobility.mobi/showthread.php?t=3484).
-------------------------------------------

I actually enjoyed reading this (http://www.domainbits.com/mobi) as he makes some very valid points. I recommend everyone read it as it definitely got me thinking. One observation, and concern, that I share is that many .mobi’s are ending up in the hands of domainers, many of whom aren’t going to develop them. Those sitting on their .mobi domains are banking on the rest of us developing ours. If we all thought that way, .mobi would obviously fail. Luckily, we don’t.

However, what a lot of these naysers fail to mention, or even consider, is that .mobi's success does not necessarily, or exclusively, depend upon its adoption by the majority of established companies. Say what?!? Yup, that's right. In other words, .mobi can succeed even if the majority of large corporations don’t adopt it (and instead choose to use their .com’s for mobile access). If enough new players enter this market and develop the best mobile sites via .mobi, then the public will notice .mobi. Why? Because people don’t care about domains or extensions, they care about which are the most useful sites (not to say that, all else being equal, a great domain can't make a huge difference, because it can, but it’s not a substitute for a crappy site). So if .mobi’s provide the most useful sites on the go, then people are going to use those sites on their mobiles and realize that most of them end with .mobi. Obviously, an established company already has name recognition and budget to build kick-ass websites (which is why I made this (http://mobility.mobi/showpost.php?p=19332&postcount=3) and this (http://mobility.mobi/showpost.php?p=19423&postcount=21) point regarding the upcoming ultra-premiums), so it’s a lot easier for them to make .mobi successful a lot sooner. In fact, if all large corporations adopted .mobi, then .mobi would easily succeed from the advertising alone that those companies would provide. But the reality is, not all companies are adopting .mobi, so we cannot depend on that.

So can new, smaller players really make up the difference? Judge for yourself. According to this source (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/long_tail_shrinking.php), the Top 10 websites account for over 40% of pageviews. Now here's the real kicker. Have a quick look at those Top 10 (http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none) most trafficked PC websites (Yahoo, Google, Youtube, Windows Live, MSN, MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia, Hi5, and Orkut). How many of those were started by an established company? Only 3 (and that's including Orkut.com, which was actually started by 1 guy named "Orkut" at Google, and MSN.com and Live.com which are actually from the same company, Microsoft). That means that a whopping 70% of the Top 10 websites on the internet were started by new, smaller players. So the success of .mobi will actually depend more on small players launching big ideas, than big companies launching small ideas. But for that to happen, .mobi sites need to come from new players that have the same entrepreneurial spirit that has existed for so long in .com’s. The fact of the matter is, start-ups can often times do a better job than corporations, on a much smaller budget and with a lot less people, simply because they’re more willing (and able) to think outside the box. Facebook was started by a 20 year old, not an established company, and is now the most valuable Social Networking site worth $15 billion. Google was started by two guys in their mid-twenties and is now the most popular search engine and worth more than The Coca-Cola Company. Those are 2 quick examples, and there are several more. So this is a unique opportunity for start-ups (and I use that term loosely to describe anyone developing a .mobi) to help build an entire multi-billion dollar industry from scratch. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

We've seen how important the top sites are in terms of traffic. So it's imperative that the majority of the most popular mobile websites end in .mobi, and the ultra-premiums are best positioned to do that. That's not to say that only the top sites matter. I will refine my original post (http://mobility.mobi/showthread.php?t=130) about development to say that .mobi needs both quantity and quality of sites to ensure the depth and breadth it needs to cover the entire mobile space. The majority of mobile websites need to be .mobi's (quantity) and the majority of the top mobile websites need to be .mobi's (quality). At that point, .mobi will have the mobile universe covered, and I can assure you that any company not yet using its .mobi will, at the very least, redirect it to their mobile .com, at which point .mobi will contain the entire mobile universe and become the defacto standard of the mobile internet since people will no longer have a need to visit any other extension on their mobile devices.

So the fact that all .mobi’s are viewable on a mobile phone is not enough to make it the defacto standard of the mobile internet because if the top mobile websites are still developed on a .com while .mobi lags behind with more quantity but lesser quality mobile websites, then it can never become the defacto standard because a large chunk of the mobile traffic will be going to non-.mobi's. So I'm going to be a lot more demanding of .mobi's "trustmark". The .mobi "trustmark" has to be more than just "always viewable on a mobile device", which works to differentiate itself for now since there aren’t many mobile websites hosted on other TLD’s, but less so in the future as more mobile .com's start popping up. Instead, the trustmark has to become "best-in-class site and always viewable on a mobile device". In fact, if all 5,000+ premium .mobi’s and 650 city .mobi’s (http://mobility.mobi/showthread.php?t=796) are developed into best-in-class mobile websites, do you think the corporate adoption rate will even matter? Do you think the naysayer cliché of ".mobi isn’t needed", will matter? No, because by then, a lot of real people will be using real .mobi sites and that’s all that matters.

So .mobi is not just about letting users know your site is viewable on a mobile, it's also about letting them know that the best mobile sites are .mobi's. That's our job. We can either sit back with some popcorn, on the sidelines, and watch what happens, or we can make it happen by developing cool, useful, and original sites like RecalledToys.mobi (http://recalledtoys.mobi/) which the media will naturally take interest in and push .mobi forward. That doesn't mean that corporate adoption doesn't matter, it just means we can't depend solely on it. That’s why I’m starting to shift my perception of myself from .mobi domainer to .mobi developer working at an exciting new mobile startup. Now that sounds a lot more exciting!

In short, for .mobi to succeed:

We can't depend exclusively on corporate adoption of .mobi.
New, small .mobi players need to have big ideas and act on them.
All .mobi's need to be best-in-class mobile websites (from ultra-premiums like Movies.mobi to non-premium niche's such as PetFood.mobi).
The majority of mobile websites need to be .mobi's to add breadth.
The majority of the most popular mobile websites need to be .mobi's to add depth and solidify its position as the premium mobile extension.
The .mobi trustmark must be "best-in-class site and always viewable on a mobile device".
And finally, we need to work hard to ensure that trustmark by developing our .mobi's into kick-ass mobile websites.

Of course, all of this, just like all those blog posts from people far more experienced than me, are simply opinions. I still think .mobi can fail (which I also use loosely to mean "not reach the potential we expect", as it will never completely fail). But I think there is a much greater chance that it will succeed. That's the faith I have in the .mobi community. :)

[newton]

Very well said .. a stunning post in fact and kudos

[ezinaz]

Great post, Andres. I am a developer and am on the front lines fighting for .mobi to be a success.

Check out this article from James Pearce, who talks about .mobi's place given new technology such as the iphone
http://pc.dev.mobi/node/147

But here's the thing. I believe .mobi is about so much more than just small, compliant markup that will reliably work on all handsets. It's also about the context of mobility: it's about a web user inferring that the provider of the site has thought through what he or she, on the move, wants to do on that site.

Or to put it another way, with an acid test: if I was on the move, was running Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2 on my phone, and I knew that the site I want has both .com and .mobi addresses, which would I choose?

It's easy: device and browser regardless, I still want to go to the site that targets my particular context (a human on the move). And that would be the .mobi address.




And my take on this:

What he's suggesting here it seems is that .mobi might could become a indication to the user of the intent of the site, that it is meant for those on the go (not just for those with tiny screens). I like this thought, and think that it is important for us to market our .mobi's with this in mind.

I'm thinking of slogans like: ".mobi, it's not your parents .com..." or "Let your mom go to .com."

.mobi could indicate cutting edge, for those on the go, those who embrace the mobile web. New, exciting web sites, with new abilities for those on the go.

If .mobi can fill this space, then it will be successful beyond our dreams.

We must ensure that the most compelling and cutting edge mobile sites are .mobi sites. I believe that we have the advantage because we are solely focused on that. All that we need is one or two "killer apps" that are branded with the .mobi domain, for the extension to gain legitimacy. Couple that with the fact that big corporations are saying "me too" and moving their mobile content to .mobi.

[Reece]

I'm working on my site as I write this :) It's alot of work developing unique content but I have to agree with you Andres -- development is key to success. My goal is Top 200k Alexa (with no cheats) inside of 3 months. I have along ways to go and plenty of time, so I hope I can get there :cool:

[Work In Progress]

I agree 100% on this one!

I am not a developer by any stretch of the imagination. But putting together a simple site utilizing mobisitegalore is really quite easy. Just takes a little time. I started by having someone else develop my first 3 sites. I only designed the logo's. They're all pretty simple and didn't cost much. Yet, all of them are getting traffic and are being used (over 85% views by mobile devices). The other two I currently have live were done by myself. All 5 made mTLD's showcase.

It's not that hard. I'm working at more as time allows. There's a simple satisfaction that comes from bringing a site / idea alive. Adding to the multitude of facts that Andres has hit on, without live sites, mTLD will not be advertising to the masses anytime soon. And without advertising to the masses, we'll be stuck in limbo waiting.

I gotta go...more sites to work on ;)

[Scandiman]

I agree 100% on this one!

Me too!! I'm not much of a developer either but simple sites are a great improvement over parking pages. With increasing availability of mobile ad networks there are ways to monetize these simple sites as well.

Like you said, it's time to get back to work building those sites!

[thinking1]

I couldn't agree more.

I made money today with my developed mobi sites. Did you?

[Scandiman]

II made money today with my developed mobi sites. Did you?
Just checked and the answer is no but the day is still young. But my 3 silly sites did earn about a buck so far this month and they didn't take too much to build. More major efforts continue to be worked on, I look forward to posting for user reviews.

[Reece]

I couldn't agree more.

I made money today with my developed mobi sites. Did you?

I was making about 50c a day on my site before I decided to take ads off last month. Since then my traffic has doubled, so I'd imagine I could be making somewhere in the vicinity of $1/day. Although I'd much rather focus on quality content at this time than fiddle around with McDonald's money with my flagship name :cool:

[bricio]

very nice post Andres
we all know that development is the key
w ur post u certainly encourage many people to build their mobi`s, increase our mobi`s value and make .mobi known

[ozuforyou]

Dear Andres,

I wish a great developer but I am not. If I had time enough, I would study the whole dreamweaver guide trying to give some worth to my domains which I haven't still developed. Unfortunately I have to work and I have little time left to think on how to develop a web page. I am doing my best to convince people who are involved on this to give me a hand. Just Santorini (with some help) I did something but it is still being armed and I am pretending to develop something related to "sport scores" with resultados.mobi. :)

Anyway, even if providing some kind of service with our great .mobi names, it is not as crucial as the exhaustive work that the official mobi registers have to do in order to promote mobi. So our hopes rely basically on their effort to convince main enterprises as google to promote their mobi developed page on their main .com pages.

Instead of talking through a forum page, I expect we shall have this interesting exchange of impressions over the yacht's deck of one of us.

Good luck! glory to mobi's!;)

[Scandiman]

ozuforyou, I want to encourage you to check out site.mobi. It is like a self serve website builder. Take some time each day if you can to familiarize yourself with it and you'll be building sites before you know it.

[thinking1]

Yesterday wasn't too bad. I made close to $3 with my names.

If this increase in clicks continues then my 2 main developed mobi names should be able to pay for renewal for my 180 other names for years to come. I also plan on getting alot more developed with ads (I have a ton without ads).

This is fun.

[coast]

You're speaking the truth, Andres. I don't know how to make logos or banners, and today I figured out that is my main obstacle.

So, in the spirit of "doing something imperfectly is better than doing nothing" I am going to make some boring jpgs (hopefully not too boring) and get the sites up. Give me a coupla weeks...

[photoman]

I'm not a pc whiz but I have developed a site at http://www.mobisitegalore.com (http://www.mobisitegalore.com/)
and it's got a score 5/5

Every single .mobi I have registered is pointing at my photographic site, so I'd like to think i've done my bit so far!.

Ok we're all domainers/investors etc, but I agree with Andres post: we do have to put some content up for people to see and read! I've even forwarded my 'TESTMATCH.mobi to anothers' cricket site for the moment (cause I didn't want anyone to see a dead ended site!)


In case you want to know what site it is it's http://erwingroen.mobi ;)
(http://erwingroen.mobi/)

[Pred]

.

Can't wait to see the houses you build...

Cheers,
Andres

P.S. As I mentioned in another forum, I won't wish you guys good luck with your .mobi's because the success of .mobi won't depend on luck. It will depend on development.

Great post Andres.
I agree fully.
The last sentence sums it up.
As each domain is virtual real estate.
The better the name &the better developed will decide whether or not it i Premium.

[fathomjh]

I agree. Development is the key for mobi's success. I have to get my butt of the couch and start mine! I have lots I'm working on at the moment, we'll see how they eventually turn out, no peeking :)

[andyr]

Cheap quick logos - I use wordart in microsoft office, copy them and paste into irfanview (free) to resize as you wish (120 px wide) save as gif or jpeg.

A simple header, footer and index.php is all you need, you can quickly change links and pictures or text to the subject you are developing.

I use PSPad Editor it is free and easier to use than dreamweaver I think. Adequate for this task anyway

Make for quick loading, keep pages small.

andyr

[GijsZePa]

Developing isn't the problem in my case (as a professional asp.net developer), but it's the content that's making it difficult for me. I own for example recepten.mobi ...very good dutch name (recipes). Now I need the recipes (not so good i the kitchen )..

Martin

[Reece]

Developing isn't the problem in my case (as a professional asp.net developer), but it's the content that's making it difficult for me. I own for example recepten.mobi ...very good dutch name (recipes). Now I need the recipes (not so good i the kitchen )..

Martin

I'm the same way. I learnt my lesson from .com (in which 100% of my names are undeveloped because I don't have the requisite time + knowledge)... I now stick mostly to names which I either know alot about or names which I know people that know alot about those topics. It's just too expensive to start hiring people to design what's approaching 400 names, so I really have to be careful to pick and choose my names appropriately. Currently have 2 sites developed -- antioxidants.mobi, and a minisite, orac.mobi. I'm hoping to get antimatter.mobi started in the winter time.

It's time consuming making unique content. Because most of my names are related to antioxidants, I forwarded all those names to my antioxidant site, that way people can find relevant information. Not sure if I'll eventually develop minisites for each such name or whether I'll just forward the names to their respective pages on my main site. A lot of work to do still...

[Andres Kello]

Developing isn't the problem in my case (as a professional asp.net developer), but it's the content that's making it difficult for me. I own for example recepten.mobi ...very good dutch name (recipes). Now I need the recipes (not so good i the kitchen )..

MartinYou don't actually need the recipes. Create a Web 2.0 site where anyone can submit recipes which are then voted on by other users. The highest rated recipes then appear at the top. Make sure the site is fully searchable. You create the skeleton of the site and let your users add the meat and flesh, to put it graphically. You create both a useful site and a community of users that rely on each other and keep coming back for more.

Content shouldn't be an issue if you think outside the box. Recipes on your mobile would come in handy in the kitchen. :biggrin:

[GijsZePa]

You don't actually need the recipes. Create a Web 2.0 site where anyone can submit recipes which are then voted on by other users. The highest rated recipes then appear at the top. Make sure the site is fully searchable. You create the skeleton of the site and let your users add the meat and flesh, to put it graphically. You create both a useful site and a community of users that rely on each other and keep coming back for more.

Content shouldn't be an issue if you think outside the box. Recipes on your mobile would come in handy in the kitchen. :biggrin:

Well...and handy in the supermarket. (was thinking about a shoppinglist, based on the choosen recipe(s) )

Thank you for your input :embarassed:

Martin

[nikita]

hi sir
your site santorini dotmobi has the same color and the same style looks my sardegna.mobi i developed sardegna.mobi
there is no problem but better you send me an email befor

[Scandiman]

hi sir
your site santorini dotmobi has the same color and the same style looks my sardegna.mobi i developed sardegna.mobi
there is no problem but better you send me an email befor
I think you will find a lot of style similarities between many .mobi sites. I've seen many sites with similar colors as yours. Sardegna.mobi is a nice geo name, I wish you well with it and the site looks good!

[nikita]

u r right there is ok
where can i get mobi templates exapt dev.mobi ?

[Scandiman]

u r right there is ok
where can i get mobi templates exapt dev.mobi ?
You can build your own using site.mobi

[musicdotmobi]

Andres,

Count me in. Once I get music.mobi expect nothing less from me than let the world know about .mobi via my site.

Thumbs up and if anyone has any development mobile ideas, feel free to contact me. I think the only real issue with the .mobi right now is that most sites look like parked pages and links. Something needs to be done to make the sites look more "credible"

.mobi has to become the standard for mobile applications.


Dear Fellow Mobiers,

Development is the single most important factor in the success of .mobi, and therefore your .mobi investment. To put it bluntly, if you're not developing your .mobi's, then you're hurting .mobi and therefore your own investment. Do not wait for a big player to adopt and promote .mobi, you cannot control that. Focus on what you can control.

Don't sit on the sidelines, be pro-active. It doesn't matter what you develop, it could be a simple 1-page site with basic information, but at least it's something, someone, somewhere will see when they visit your .mobi on a mobile phone. Those relying on parking are playing the game backwards. Parking requires traffic. Traffic requires .mobi awareness. .mobi awareness requires development. Don't start on the wrong side or you'll be working against .mobi and against your investment. Obviously, many of us are simply "domainers" who have several hundred .mobi's and it's very hard for us to develop ALL of them, but that's no excuse for us not to start somewhere and develop our .mobi's one by one. Better to move slowly then not at all. Don't sit on your investment, make it work for you, not against you.

It's simple. We're in a race to develop the most mobile content. If .com's beat us to it with their simple auto-detect-and-redirects, and the consumers begins to realize that .com's are displaying just fine on their mobiles, we will have lost the game, our investments will be worth only a fraction of what they are today, and consumers will have lost a great opportunity for a better, simpler, and easier mobile solution. But if we show the world that .mobi is the biggest, baddest extension for mobiles by ensuring that there are many, many more developed .mobi's than anything else for mobiles, .mobi will be able to solidify its position as the defacto standard of the mobile internet. At the very moment, our investments will skyrocket.

I know many of you are not professional developers. Heck, neither am I. But that's why we're here, to help each other make the most of our .mobi's, and that includes development. Development can only ADD value to your domain, so if you don't want to develop for .mobi, then develop because you want to ensure and increase the value of your portfolio. If you don't want to develop a particular name, then sell it to someone who will, it will be better for your overall investment in the long term. I never developed a mobile website until I registered my first .mobi. Now take a look at the first .mobi I developed: Banking.mobi (http://banking.mobi/). Is it some sexy high-tech banking portal that connects you directly to your bank account allowing you to make instant, seamless mobile money transfers to anyone, anywhere in the world? Not yet, but at least it's something. For now, it's a just a simple site listing mobile banking sites around the world...but it's a hell of a lot better than hosting parking ads for sites that aren't even optimized for mobile phones. Best part is, it took me only a couple of hours to do using mTLD's .mobi template (http://pc.mtld.mobi/community/content_devforum.html). If I can do it, ANYONE can, I can't stress that enough. In fact, that's the beauty of .mobi, the sites you create are a lot smaller than normal websites, making development a lot faster and easier, yet we have a potential market size that is 4 times greater. How's that for an advantage? There is absolutely no excuse.

So don't wait for the big guys to develop theirs. Big corporations are notorious for being bureaucratic and moving very, very slowly to adopt and embrace new technologies. Be a pioneer in this market, learn the ropes, develop yours now, and enjoy the ride! Imagine what the pioneers of the original internet felt like in the early 90's...I was too young to be a part of that, but now we ALL have a shot at experiencing the very same thing and helping to create a new market that will revolutionize the way the world does just about everything.

Let this sticky thread be a constant reminder of the critical need to develop, that's why I'm placing it in the Discussion forum. At worst, it'll make you feel guilty for not developing your .mobi's which might eventually get you to develop some of your .mobi's. :) At best, it'll make everyone get into the mobile development mood and start cranking out delicious mobile content. To those of you already developing (and there are several), thank you for increasing the value of my, and your, investment.

Mobility.mobi is pro-.mobi, and therefore pro-development.

Can't wait to see the houses you build...

Cheers,
Andres

P.S. As I mentioned in another forum, I won't wish you guys good luck with your .mobi's because the success of .mobi won't depend on luck. It will depend on development.


Added Nov. 22, 2007 from this thread (http://mobility.mobi/showthread.php?t=3484).
-------------------------------------------

I actually enjoyed reading this (http://www.domainbits.com/mobi) as he makes some very valid points. I recommend everyone read it as it definitely got me thinking. One observation, and concern, that I share is that many .mobi’s are ending up in the hands of domainers, many of whom aren’t going to develop them. Those sitting on their .mobi domains are banking on the rest of us developing ours. If we all thought that way, .mobi would obviously fail. Luckily, we don’t.

However, what a lot of these naysers fail to mention, or even consider, is that .mobi's success does not necessarily, or exclusively, depend upon its adoption by the majority of established companies. Say what?!? Yup, that's right. In other words, .mobi can succeed even if the majority of large corporations don’t adopt it (and instead choose to use their .com’s for mobile access). If enough new players enter this market and develop the best mobile sites via .mobi, then the public will notice .mobi. Why? Because people don’t care about domains or extensions, they care about which are the most useful sites (not to say that, all else being equal, a great domain can't make a huge difference, because it can, but it’s not a substitute for a crappy site). So if .mobi’s provide the most useful sites on the go, then people are going to use those sites on their mobiles and realize that most of them end with .mobi. Obviously, an established company already has name recognition and budget to build kick-ass websites (which is why I made this (http://mobility.mobi/showpost.php?p=19332&postcount=3) and this (http://mobility.mobi/showpost.php?p=19423&postcount=21) point regarding the upcoming ultra-premiums), so it’s a lot easier for them to make .mobi successful a lot sooner. In fact, if all large corporations adopted .mobi, then .mobi would easily succeed from the advertising alone that those companies would provide. But the reality is, not all companies are adopting .mobi, so we cannot depend on that.

So can new, smaller players really make up the difference? Judge for yourself. According to this source (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/long_tail_shrinking.php), the Top 10 websites account for over 40% of pageviews. Now here's the real kicker. Have a quick look at those Top 10 (http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none) most trafficked PC websites (Yahoo, Google, Youtube, Windows Live, MSN, MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia, Hi5, and Orkut). How many of those were started by an established company? Only 3 (and that's including Orkut.com, which was actually started by 1 guy named "Orkut" at Google, and MSN.com and Live.com which are actually from the same company, Microsoft). That means that a whopping 70% of the Top 10 websites on the internet were started by new, smaller players. So the success of .mobi will actually depend more on small players launching big ideas, than big companies launching small ideas. But for that to happen, .mobi sites need to come from new players that have the same entrepreneurial spirit that has existed for so long in .com’s. The fact of the matter is, start-ups can often times do a better job than corporations, on a much smaller budget and with a lot less people, simply because they’re more willing (and able) to think outside the box. Facebook was started by a 20 year old, not an established company, and is now the most valuable Social Networking site worth $15 billion. Google was started by two guys in their mid-twenties and is now the most popular search engine and worth more than The Coca-Cola Company. Those are 2 quick examples, and there are several more. So this is a unique opportunity for start-ups (and I use that term loosely to describe anyone developing a .mobi) to help build an entire multi-billion dollar industry from scratch. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

We've seen how important the top sites are in terms of traffic. So it's imperative that the majority of the most popular mobile websites end in .mobi, and the ultra-premiums are best positioned to do that. That's not to say that only the top sites matter. I will refine my original post (http://mobility.mobi/showthread.php?t=130) about development to say that .mobi needs both quantity and quality of sites to ensure the depth and breadth it needs to cover the entire mobile space. The majority of mobile websites need to be .mobi's (quanitity) and the majority of the top mobile websites need to be .mobi's (quality). At that point, .mobi will have the mobile universe covered, and I can assure you that any company not yet using its .mobi will, at the very least, redirect it to their mobile .com, at which point .mobi will contain the entire mobile universe and become the defacto standard of the mobile internet since people will no longer have a need to visit any other extension on their mobile devices.

So the fact that all .mobi’s are viewable on a mobile phone is not enough to make it the defacto standard of the mobile internet because if the top mobile websites are still developed on a .com while .mobi lags behind with more quantity but lesser quality mobile websites, then it can never become the defacto standard because a large chunk of the mobile traffic will be going to non-.mobi's. So I'm going to be a lot more demanding of .mobi's "trustmark". The .mobi "trustmark" has to be more than just "always viewable on a mobile device", which works to differentiate itself for now since there aren’t many mobile websites hosted on other TLD’s, but less so in the future as more mobile .com's start popping up. Instead, the trustmark has to become "best-in-class site and always viewable on a mobile device". In fact, if all 5,000+ premium .mobi’s and 650 city .mobi’s (http://mobility.mobi/showthread.php?t=796) are developed into best-in-class mobile websites, do you think the corporate adoption rate will even matter? Do you think the naysayer cliché of ".mobi isn’t needed", will matter? No, because by then, a lot of real people will be using real .mobi sites and that’s all that matters.

So .mobi is not just about letting users know your site is viewable on a mobile, it's also about letting them know that the best mobile sites are .mobi's. That's our job. We can either sit back with some popcorn, on the sidelines, and watch what happens, or we can make it happen by developing cool, useful, and original sites like RecalledToys.mobi (http://recalledtoys.mobi/) which the media will naturally take interest in and push .mobi forward. That doesn't mean that corporate adoption doesn't matter, it just means we can't depend solely on it. That’s why I’m starting to shift my perception of myself from .mobi domainer to .mobi developer working at an exciting new mobile startup. Now that sounds a lot more exciting!

In short, for .mobi to succeed:
We can't depend exclusively on corporate adoption of .mobi.
New, small .mobi players need to have big ideas and act on them.
All .mobi's need to be best-in-class mobile websites (from ultra-premiums like Movies.mobi to non-premium niche's such as PetFood.mobi).
The majority of mobile websites need to be .mobi's to add breadth.
The majority of the most popular mobile websites need to be .mobi's to add depth and solidify its position as the premium mobile extension.
The .mobi trustmark must be "best-in-class site and always viewable on a mobile device".
And finally, we need to work hard to ensure that trustmark by developing our .mobi's into kick-ass mobile websites.Of course, all of this, just like all those blog posts from people far more experienced than me, are simply opinions. I still think .mobi can fail (which I also use loosely to mean "not reach the potential we expect", as it will never completely fail). But I think there is a much greater chance that it will succeed. That's the faith I have in the .mobi community. :)

[thebiffenator]

Glad to see your all about development. Development is the key to .mobi's sucess (which is a nobrainer). I have 3 more sites on the way (before the end of the year), and two of them should be ready very soon.

[Pred]

more rep on way
glutton! :biggrin:

i am all for developing more.
i actually have a 'biggie' being developed by my 'bro'
i'm also almost done on an 18 month .com project where had to threaten developer with court!
also just hand coding a basic html sales site

BUT
still found time to throw up another mobi. had nearly no time or ideas, so very sparse, but want hopefully firms to find and maybe pay to advertise. i can work on some automated payemnt in time, easy with paypal, but have some much bigger projects to finish.
just about to add to siggy
parkhome.mobi
its VERY basic and main points for developing was for 3 reasons:
1/ time it gets found by engines and people may get a little traffic, then i can pack out with more info and adsense etc
2/ gets another one out there in the 'ecosystem'. god i hate that term lol, reminds me of the 'freak'
3/ increases chance of someone coming in with an offer and increases value of domain

i'm knackered, but i may develop an 'adult' one tonight
its a tough life! :)




Dear Fellow Mobiers,

Development is the single most important factor in the success of .mobi, and therefore your .mobi investment. To put it bluntly, if you're not developing your .mobi's, then you're hurting .mobi and therefore your own investment. Do not wait for a big player to adopt and promote .mobi, you cannot control that. Focus on what you can control.

Don't sit on the sidelines, be pro-active. It doesn't matter what you develop, it could be a simple 1-page site with basic information, but at least it's something, someone, somewhere will see when they visit your .mobi on a mobile phone. Those relying on parking are playing the game backwards. Parking requires traffic. Traffic requires .mobi awareness. .mobi awareness requires development. Don't start on the wrong side or you'll be working against .mobi and against your investment. Obviously, many of us are simply "domainers" who have several hundred .mobi's and it's very hard for us to develop ALL of them, but that's no excuse for us not to start somewhere and develop our .mobi's one by one. Better to move slowly then not at all. Don't sit on your investment, make it work for you, not against you.

It's simple. We're in a race to develop the most mobile content. If .com's beat us to it with their simple auto-detect-and-redirects, and the consumers begins to realize that .com's are displaying just fine on their mobiles, we will have lost the game, our investments will be worth only a fraction of what they are today, and consumers will have lost a great opportunity for a better, simpler, and easier mobile solution. But if we show the world that .mobi is the biggest, baddest extension for mobiles by ensuring that there are many, many more developed .mobi's than anything else for mobiles, .mobi will be able to solidify its position as the defacto standard of the mobile internet. At the very moment, our investments will skyrocket.

I know many of you are not professional developers. Heck, neither am I. But that's why we're here, to help each other make the most of our .mobi's, and that includes development. Development can only ADD value to your domain, so if you don't want to develop for .mobi, then develop because you want to ensure and increase the value of your portfolio. If you don't want to develop a particular name, then sell it to someone who will, it will be better for your overall investment in the long term. I never developed a mobile website until I registered my first .mobi. Now take a look at the first .mobi I developed: Banking.mobi (http://banking.mobi/). Is it some sexy high-tech banking portal that connects you directly to your bank account allowing you to make instant, seamless mobile money transfers to anyone, anywhere in the world? Not yet, but at least it's something. For now, it's a just a simple site listing mobile banking sites around the world...but it's a hell of a lot better than hosting parking ads for sites that aren't even optimized for mobile phones. Best part is, it took me only a couple of hours to do using mTLD's .mobi template (http://pc.mtld.mobi/community/content_devforum.html). If I can do it, ANYONE can, I can't stress that enough. In fact, that's the beauty of .mobi, the sites you create are a lot smaller than normal websites, making development a lot faster and easier, yet we have a potential market size that is 4 times greater. How's that for an advantage? There is absolutely no excuse.

So don't wait for the big guys to develop theirs. Big corporations are notorious for being bureaucratic and moving very, very slowly to adopt and embrace new technologies. Be a pioneer in this market, learn the ropes, develop yours now, and enjoy the ride! Imagine what the pioneers of the original internet felt like in the early 90's...I was too young to be a part of that, but now we ALL have a shot at experiencing the very same thing and helping to create a new market that will revolutionize the way the world does just about everything.

Let this sticky thread be a constant reminder of the critical need to develop, that's why I'm placing it in the Discussion forum. At worst, it'll make you feel guilty for not developing your .mobi's which might eventually get you to develop some of your .mobi's. :) At best, it'll make everyone get into the mobile development mood and start cranking out delicious mobile content. To those of you already developing (and there are several), thank you for increasing the value of my, and your, investment.

Mobility.mobi is pro-.mobi, and therefore pro-development.

Can't wait to see the houses you build...

Cheers,
Andres

P.S. As I mentioned in another forum, I won't wish you guys good luck with your .mobi's because the success of .mobi won't depend on luck. It will depend on development.


Added Nov. 22, 2007 from this thread (http://mobility.mobi/showthread.php?t=3484).
-------------------------------------------

I actually enjoyed reading this (http://www.domainbits.com/mobi) as he makes some very valid points. I recommend everyone read it as it definitely got me thinking. One observation, and concern, that I share is that many .mobi’s are ending up in the hands of domainers, many of whom aren’t going to develop them. Those sitting on their .mobi domains are banking on the rest of us developing ours. If we all thought that way, .mobi would obviously fail. Luckily, we don’t.

However, what a lot of these naysers fail to mention, or even consider, is that .mobi's success does not necessarily, or exclusively, depend upon its adoption by the majority of established companies. Say what?!? Yup, that's right. In other words, .mobi can succeed even if the majority of large corporations don’t adopt it (and instead choose to use their .com’s for mobile access). If enough new players enter this market and develop the best mobile sites via .mobi, then the public will notice .mobi. Why? Because people don’t care about domains or extensions, they care about which are the most useful sites (not to say that, all else being equal, a great domain can't make a huge difference, because it can, but it’s not a substitute for a crappy site). So if .mobi’s provide the most useful sites on the go, then people are going to use those sites on their mobiles and realize that most of them end with .mobi. Obviously, an established company already has name recognition and budget to build kick-ass websites (which is why I made this (http://mobility.mobi/showpost.php?p=19332&postcount=3) and this (http://mobility.mobi/showpost.php?p=19423&postcount=21) point regarding the upcoming ultra-premiums), so it’s a lot easier for them to make .mobi successful a lot sooner. In fact, if all large corporations adopted .mobi, then .mobi would easily succeed from the advertising alone that those companies would provide. But the reality is, not all companies are adopting .mobi, so we cannot depend on that.

So can new, smaller players really make up the difference? Judge for yourself. According to this source (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/long_tail_shrinking.php), the Top 10 websites account for over 40% of pageviews. Now here's the real kicker. Have a quick look at those Top 10 (http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none) most trafficked PC websites (Yahoo, Google, Youtube, Windows Live, MSN, MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia, Hi5, and Orkut). How many of those were started by an established company? Only 3 (and that's including Orkut.com, which was actually started by 1 guy named "Orkut" at Google, and MSN.com and Live.com which are actually from the same company, Microsoft). That means that a whopping 70% of the Top 10 websites on the internet were started by new, smaller players. So the success of .mobi will actually depend more on small players launching big ideas, than big companies launching small ideas. But for that to happen, .mobi sites need to come from new players that have the same entrepreneurial spirit that has existed for so long in .com’s. The fact of the matter is, start-ups can often times do a better job than corporations, on a much smaller budget and with a lot less people, simply because they’re more willing (and able) to think outside the box. Facebook was started by a 20 year old, not an established company, and is now the most valuable Social Networking site worth $15 billion. Google was started by two guys in their mid-twenties and is now the most popular search engine and worth more than The Coca-Cola Company. Those are 2 quick examples, and there are several more. So this is a unique opportunity for start-ups (and I use that term loosely to describe anyone developing a .mobi) to help build an entire multi-billion dollar industry from scratch. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

We've seen how important the top sites are in terms of traffic. So it's imperative that the majority of the most popular mobile websites end in .mobi, and the ultra-premiums are best positioned to do that. That's not to say that only the top sites matter. I will refine my original post (http://mobility.mobi/showthread.php?t=130) about development to say that .mobi needs both quantity and quality of sites to ensure the depth and breadth it needs to cover the entire mobile space. The majority of mobile websites need to be .mobi's (quanitity) and the majority of the top mobile websites need to be .mobi's (quality). At that point, .mobi will have the mobile universe covered, and I can assure you that any company not yet using its .mobi will, at the very least, redirect it to their mobile .com, at which point .mobi will contain the entire mobile universe and become the defacto standard of the mobile internet since people will no longer have a need to visit any other extension on their mobile devices.

So the fact that all .mobi’s are viewable on a mobile phone is not enough to make it the defacto standard of the mobile internet because if the top mobile websites are still developed on a .com while .mobi lags behind with more quantity but lesser quality mobile websites, then it can never become the defacto standard because a large chunk of the mobile traffic will be going to non-.mobi's. So I'm going to be a lot more demanding of .mobi's "trustmark". The .mobi "trustmark" has to be more than just "always viewable on a mobile device", which works to differentiate itself for now since there aren’t many mobile websites hosted on other TLD’s, but less so in the future as more mobile .com's start popping up. Instead, the trustmark has to become "best-in-class site and always viewable on a mobile device". In fact, if all 5,000+ premium .mobi’s and 650 city .mobi’s (http://mobility.mobi/showthread.php?t=796) are developed into best-in-class mobile websites, do you think the corporate adoption rate will even matter? Do you think the naysayer cliché of ".mobi isn’t needed", will matter? No, because by then, a lot of real people will be using real .mobi sites and that’s all that matters.

So .mobi is not just about letting users know your site is viewable on a mobile, it's also about letting them know that the best mobile sites are .mobi's. That's our job. We can either sit back with some popcorn, on the sidelines, and watch what happens, or we can make it happen by developing cool, useful, and original sites like RecalledToys.mobi (http://recalledtoys.mobi/) which the media will naturally take interest in and push .mobi forward. That doesn't mean that corporate adoption doesn't matter, it just means we can't depend solely on it. That’s why I’m starting to shift my perception of myself from .mobi domainer to .mobi developer working at an exciting new mobile startup. Now that sounds a lot more exciting!

In short, for .mobi to succeed:
We can't depend exclusively on corporate adoption of .mobi.
New, small .mobi players need to have big ideas and act on them.
All .mobi's need to be best-in-class mobile websites (from ultra-premiums like Movies.mobi to non-premium niche's such as PetFood.mobi).
The majority of mobile websites need to be .mobi's to add breadth.
The majority of the most popular mobile websites need to be .mobi's to add depth and solidify its position as the premium mobile extension.
The .mobi trustmark must be "best-in-class site and always viewable on a mobile device".
And finally, we need to work hard to ensure that trustmark by developing our .mobi's into kick-ass mobile websites.Of course, all of this, just like all those blog posts from people far more experienced than me, are simply opinions. I still think .mobi can fail (which I also use loosely to mean "not reach the potential we expect", as it will never completely fail). But I think there is a much greater chance that it will succeed. That's the faith I have in the .mobi community. :)

[XF.com]

WELL SAID!

Just joined today and was going to post the same thing!


I'm very excited to see DEVELOPMENT plans.

[dotmobietc]

Great post. I have to say that I agree totally about development is the KEY. Since I have spent hours and hours and did I mention hours, looking for sites that are .mobi. Our search engine was designed because I could not find the .mobi sites on the big engines except the developers sites. And, now having over 700 .mobi sites in the directory, but WOW the hours spent looking for sites that are developed.

With the domains that have been purchased, parked, for sale, and or ads that just go to .com ads, the .mobi sites are at this point still relatively hidden. So, let's all increase the .mobi extensions that are built and get them listed so people can 1. find them 2. learn how to monetize them.

Sometimes we forget that Yahoo was started as a small site and so was Google and yes, ebay too. The .mobi revolution is real and it may take time, but with great people like yourselves in this forum it can and will happen.

[onassis]

I been joining all development plan since now but at no avail. :hmmmm2:

I also wanted to contribute in develop my mobi but I yet to receive guide how to do it. I hate the ideas of parked pages too for all my mobi.

[dev]

i am working on a project that may extend the .mobi usage lets see..

[new2domains]

I have questions. I have quite a few .mobi but have never tried to develop anything. I don't know where to start. Can someone point me to a starting place? I am still trying to learn how to get around this site.

_________________________________________
68 and still learning

[morse]

great words Andres . without development, we are only as good as a CFL bulb in stoneage, the stone-man can praise it , jump around it, worship it but just can use it coz there is no electricity.
But i have noticed something more, development is fine but not necessary, whats actually more important is development in the right way. I see many mobile developers making flashy websites which give a nice xml parsing failed error on mobile screen if the mobile operator is using proxy net. If a lecture comes this way regarding it, i will be more than happy to read it :) as it will come from the best in the mobi world :)

[Nairbyad]

I wonder if .mobi will explode when - dare I say it? - it becomes easier to create a .mobi site independent in some ways of the 'normal' web; when creating a .mobi site is as easy as sending SMS. Undoubtedly, when making such development available to the world and his dog, you are going to get an explosion in the number and it might look a mess to some, but who determines what the mobile world should look and sound like?

[Nairbyad]

Do mobile operators treat many of their customers as mere passive recipients of their services, and development is deliberately controlled to ensure we focus our time and money more on buying the latest ringtone or game? Monetize .mobi by all means, but open development up to everyone regardless of whether they have GCSEs or not. The mobile web is used by individuals of all abilities, so why not include anyone and everyone by developing a paying market in buying and selling development to varying degrees?

[Nairbyad]

Ignore my ignorance, I've just created my own site on peperonity.com, kraljevo2009, developing my interest in Serbia.

Me and my big thumbs!