Vance Hedderel, director of public relations and communications at dotMobi, told XBIZ that companies large and small from around the world — including ESPN, BMW and Amtrak — have registered websites specially designed to be compatible with the mobile platform. This, he said, marks the start of what is quickly becoming a global trend.
"The Internet promise of 'anywhere, anytime' access to information has been fulfilled with .mobi sites and people are excited about it," Hedderel said. "Why be tethered to a PC when you no longer need to? You have a choice as to how and when you get the content you need."
Hedderel said using a .mobi mTLD to bring content to mobile, rather than creating a separate WAP site, is ideal because it's the only uniform URL for the mobile version of a website.
"For example," Hedderel said, "Disney's URL is mobile.disney.go.com, while Bravo TV uses wap.bravotv.com and Best Buy uses bestbuy.com/m. Verizon's is verizonwireless.com/mobile. With .mobi, users can easily guess “cnnmoney.mobi” or “google.mobi” and know that their phone will give them an experience designed for mobile phones without long, expensive downloads."
And for the adult industry, Hedderel said .mobi will allow easy, one-to-one content delivery that remains private, and will give content providers an "off-deck" solution to reach end users without being inhibited by an operator portal.
"This means content — and pricing for that content — is at the site provider's discretion," Hedderel said.
dotMobi offers content providers free tools and style guides for creating specialized mobile sites, and even features a Mobile Readiness Report that will run a .com site through its system to determine how well it would translate on a mobile device.
"When you access a .mobi site, that site will be designed exclusively for mobile phones," Hedderel said. "And that means an end user is guaranteed to have a good experience. The site will display quickly on your phone, and you will see the site as it's supposed to be seen. A .mobi address helps a web user know that the provider of a site has thought through what a user on the move wants to do on that site."