New Owner of Flowers.mobi

[ChinaMobi]

New owner paid 5k for it. See here.

[Scandiman]

Congratulations to .mobi and flowers.mobi, it is a really positive events for dotMobi

I'll get excited if they substantively market it, otherwise it's mainly in the defensive registration/redirection category. Their mobile page points people to 1800flowers.com or apps, years ago they marketed 1800flowers.mobi but that changed.

http://ww31.1800flowers.com/template...ersionTag=true

http://www.internetretailer.com/2007...-a-mobile-site

[ChinaMobi]

Defensive purpose, I think.

[mjnels]

i find the "you guys missed an opportunity of a lifetime" statement from the sales thread hilarious.. feels like 2007 with that silly hype talk. there were days i wanted to puke from all the hype talk, self promotion, self back slapping that most .mobi domainers on the forums were spitting. bleh.. i like both feet planted on the ground when dealing with money.

[gogo]

i find the "you guys missed an opportunity of a lifetime" statement from the sales thread hilarious

Yes the opportunity to lose money LOL. Still don't think it's worth more than $500.

Wonder what will happen with .flowers?

[keithmt]

Wonder what will happen with .flowers?

The bigger question is how will .mobi stand up to .mobiLE?

[gogo]

The bigger question is how will .mobi stand up to .mobiLE?

Well it's a case of an ant standing beside an egg... who knows what will hatch out of the .mobile egg or if it will live and grow. Basically .mobi failed as an extension for mobile content - I don't see .mobile even attempting that. auto.mobile ? bat.mobile? seo.mobile?

Google have already said the new extensions have no SEO advantage, so to go for mobile phone as domain keywords you would need mobilephone.mobile for flowers you need sendflowers.flowers.

.mobi isn't exactly standing up now, just lying in a hospital bed and wondering if life support will be switched off.

[cramer]

wasnt there some aspect of the approval of dot mobi, via icann, some language which said there would be no other extension approved that designated mobile?

[ChinaMobi]

.mobi and .mobile are too close, imo. But, hey, .co was approved even though .com existed before it.

[Scandiman]

wasnt there some aspect of the approval of dot mobi, via icann, some language which said there would be no other extension approved that designated mobile?

Here's something I found that may be relevant:

http://www.icann.org/en/about/agreem...egistries/mobi

Specifically part 7 of Appendix S: http://www.icann.org/en/about/agreem...23nov05-en.htm

TLD Differentiation

ICANN and Registry Operator acknowledge that a criterion included in the application process in which the .mobi TLD was selected, and in the previous TLD application expansion round, was that a new TLD be “clearly differentiated from existing TLD’s.” ICANN, when undertaking to effect the delegation of new TLDs, shall take into consideration Internet community input received, including any objections interested third parties may have under policy considerations or applicable law or otherwise, regarding the creation of new TLD strings.

I don't know if the 'clearly differentiated from existing TLD's' language is part of the new gtld expansion application process, haven't gone through that in detail.

[Scandiman]

.mobi and .mobile are too close, imo. But, hey, .co was approved even though .com existed before it.

.co was a ccTLD, but not sure what it is currently, icann doesn't list it in the cctld agreements but iana still refers to it as a country code

http://www.icann.org/en/about/agreements/cctlds

http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db

http://www.iana.org/reports/2009/co-...24nov2009.html

[gogo]

I don't know if the 'clearly differentiated from existing TLD's' language is part of the new gtld expansion application process, haven't gone through that in detail.

Neither do I know but at a practical level I just cannot see Afilias wasting any money or time trying to stop other extensions. Unless of course that is a bartering chip to get grandfather rights for .mobi holders - including their own stable of reserved premiums. Posted a bit on that in the other thread - http://mobility.mobi/showthread.php?...a-app-for-That

[Accent]

.mobi and .mobile are too close, imo. But, hey, .co was approved even though .com existed before it.

Yeah, .CO is the country Columbia, for that matter .TV is really the tiny island of Tuvalu (which island is said to have a max elevation of 7 meters and thus may not be around much longer). .ME is Montenegro, .LA is Laos - two letter extensions, for the moment, anyway, are all countries.

There is a period where objections can be made to proposed extensions, however the same guys trying to get .Mobile are bidding against Afilias on other extensions. They could negotiate away .Mobile in favor of something else they want.

.Mobily is a software company in Saudi Arabia. So it would not affect .Mobi if they used it for their private company, but software firms change quickly. Once the extension is created it can be opened to registration later. And fail, no doubt, but cause trouble as it falls.


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So three different companies are willing to try where .dotMobi has given up trying. Three companies paid $185,000 each to bid for the possibility of competing directly with .Mobi for the Mobile realm, despite .Mobi's head start.

Three companies think a Mobile extension can be successful. Really successful, not the near-stagnant "growth" of .Mobi since dotMobi quit trying. I think that speaks volumes.