Podcast: Neil Edwards, dotMobi

02-06-2007

by Tom Raftery

This episode Tom Raftery's guest on Podleaders is Neil Edwards. Neil is the CEO of dotMobi, the company managing the new .mobi top level domain (tld).

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Tom invited Neil to come on the show to tell him a little about the reasons behind the setup of .mobi and as usual he invited reader/listener questions as well. The number of questions submitted was far higher than expected so not all could be put to Neil.

Here are the questions Tom asked Neil and their times:

.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 two 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

• Jon

  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

• gemulder

  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

• Paul M. Watson

  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

All content, including audio interviews is copyright of Tom Raftery of Podleaders.com. Tom is a podcaster, blogger and web marketing expert and is available for freelance or full-time projects. You can see Tom's skills set here.