I won’t say the newly declared .mobi top-level domain extension is a ploy to drain pockets for no good reason, but I’ll come close. This domain extension has been approved and is being marketed as the solution for Web content providers to help people using mobile devices find the scaled-down version of a site.
I’ve written about the issue of finding mobile content recently (Sept. 24, Sept. 13), and I’d like to point out the two biggest problems with the .mobi approach.
First, there are a lot of domains with the same name but different extensions. Poynter.com (occupied by a domain squatter) is not Poynter.net (a U.K. IT outsourcing firm) is not Poynter.org (this site). Which one deserves Poynter.mobi and all the errant traffic that comes with it?
The second problem is that the extension .mobi takes even more effort to type on a miniature device than .com. Who wants to type more than they have to, especially on a handheld device?
The best solution I see is the suggestion by Travis Smith of Hop Studios in his comment to one of my previous postings: m.<yourdomain>.com/.net/.org. With this convention, we all get our mobile sites — and we get to type less (assuming your site uses www. now).
And best of all: It’s free.
