Thursday, January 10, 2008

m.dot vs dot.mobi


The battle between m.dot and dot.mobi is heating up. I have had close contact with the dot.mobi consortium recently and witnessed their efforts to push their domain as the 'gold standard'.

I am noticing 2 things: there seems to be a decoupling of usage between Europe and the US, with the big guns (Yahoo, Facebook etc.) adopting the m. domain and the European operators (Orange etc.) opting instead for dot.mobi.

Also, dot.mobi is struggling to communicate its added value, namely that it has defined (and offers as a framework) a set of development standards to improve the user experience of web on mobile.

At the same time as a gold rush is taking place to acquire the popular dot.mobi sites (witness the many online auctions), the key issue of enhancing the user experience of web on mobile is taking a back seat. Pity, as dot.mobi would have gone a long way in widening the appeal and useability of mobile web.

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