Episode 54 of the PodLeaders show - 29 mins 41 secs
My guest on the show this week is Neil Edwards. Neil is the CEO of dotMobi the company managing the new .mobi top level domain (tld).
I invited Neil to come on the show to tell me a little about the reasons behind the setup of .mobi and as usual I invited reader/listener questions as well. The number of questions submitted was far higher than I expected so I couldn’t put them all to Neil unfortunately but I think I got a representative sample in.
Here are the questions I asked Neil and the times I asked them:
.mobi is the new tld for mobile devices so instead of having a .com at the end of a domain name, you can now have a .mobi, is that correct? - 0:16
.mobi is four characters, two of them on the number 6, could a better two or three character domain not have been come up with? - 01:19
Questions from readers:
PG:
What has happened to the first RFP? - 02:42
Are all Premium names still going to be released in the first 2 years? - 04:59
(Just noticed today that Helsinki.mobi is live) - 06:18
Can you provide some specifics regarding the financial investment of the Corporate investors? - 06:49
What percentage of Premium names will be released via RFP versus auction? - 07:37
Will the code compliance be enforced? - 08:37
What advertising and consumer awareness efforts will mTLD be doing to promote .mobi to the public? When will we see this happening? - 09:59
I’d like to hear Neil’s thoughts on Richard Rosenblatt’s ‘relaunch’ of .tv and how .mobi might fit in this push towards a video-centric TLD. - 11:19
Also, what does Neil think of the community/social network platform around which .tv is being marketed (and whether .mobi has learnt a thing or two from this approach)? - 12:44
What kind of support you can offer to a company who take the initiative to develop thousands of .mobi’s in one year? - 14:15
Richard
How much of the revenue being made from registrations is going towards brand awareness and advertising the benefits of .mobi websites? - 15:25
Are companies putting their weight behind .mobi because they want to stop domain squatting or because they see actual value in it? - 16:49
Douglas
Are there any plans to release city, country, and state names all currently reserved? - 17:29
Firstly thank you for the documentation, procedures and tools which have made targeting mobile users and devices easier.
However why have .mobi at all? It is an extra character, or two, to type over already popular TLDs. .mobi is unfamiliar to users and is extra cost for site owners (both to buy the domain and to setup and maintain plus there is the usual trademark and domain squatting disputes to deal with all over again). - 18:31
I also worry that a profit seeking company that enforces its own rules in their own market, like the .mobi TLD space, will not have its users in mind. Should dotMobi not be a wider internet initiative, possibly not for profit? - 21:57
Are the network operators starting to push their users onto .mobi sites? -26:20
Finally, there is still a huge lack of awareness around the .mobi tld, what do you think will be the tipping point which will lead to widespread adoption? - 27:15
Download the entire interview here
(13.5mb mp3)
Just a heads up that the ‘download here’ link appears to be broken Tom.
Good to hear the interview Tom, thanks for your effort and initiative with this.
Unfortunately, he completely misunderstood my first question, What has happened to the first RFP? This is in reference to their first RFP of news.mobi, sports.mobi, ringtones.mobi and weather.mobi, and had nothing to do with the first ICANN application.
If you have any pull, maybe you can coax Neil to comment here in writing regarding this very important release of their first RFP names.
Thanks again.
Great,
thanks for bringing that to my attention James - fixed now.
Tom
PG,
I’ll see what I can do.
i appreciate you taking the time to do this interview..
Tom,
Thanks for the interview podcast.
It was interesting to hear about Neil’s background at VeriSign - I didn’t know about that.
He’s had a tough time in the last 12 months, most blogposts and press I’ve read, Neil’s been on the receiving end of much scepticism. I like the idea of the industry backing that he speaks of, and the standards approach to .mobi site development (via the registrars). At the end of the day, it hinges on how well the development community create and deliver useful content on mobile phones within the confines of the device and standards that mTLD enforce. The premium name auction process and test partnerships is a good step in the right direction in encouraging this, but the jury is still out I suspect.
Cheers
Jon