Wednesday, October 22, 2008

.Mobi

The Aficionado.mobi domain lapsed this month and I've not asked for it to be renewed. The problem is that people just don't need that facility. Yes it would be good to have a search postcode option on the site but given the small number of shops it does not take a lot of brainpower to work out where the closest cigar shop will be.

The next issue is more fundamental, as reported back in January there are new ways that mobile phones support the internet and they don't really need you to jump through hoops to produce a page that will render and be usable on mobiles. How many phones still require a WAP based site? It's also possible to support multiple clients on one page so why would an extra domain actually be wanted and is Aficionado.mobi really more memorable than Aficionado.org.uk/Mobile especially if you get to the site via a search engine in the first place?

The Old Aficionado.Mobi site

Finally my question to my registrar was who's heard of a .mobi? Yes, the big corporations such as Amazon and Google have them but they just redirect to a sub directory of their main sites. Since the initial rush of registrations there has not been lots of people asking for .mobi sites. The man in the street when using their mobile does not type in Amazon.mobi they type in Amazon.com and expect it to work. It would be interesting to see the statistics of how many domains lapsed and were not renewed. I doubt that there will be a queue of people rushing to snap up aficionado.mobi.