Is .mobi a good idea?

Last week the .mobi domain was open for registration and a rash of companies ranging from Yahoo to the Canadian Broadcast Company snapped up the new mobile-specific Web addresses. The interest in the .mobi domain is encouraging, showing that content companies are genuinely interested in creating specific content for the mobile phone (or presenting their current content in a more mobile browser friendly manner), but all of the attention on this new Web domain may be a bit shortsighted.

On one hand, .mobi is intended to create consistency and continuity of wireless content, encouraging content providers to develop mobile-specific pages. It sets mobile content apart from regular Web content and to a certain extent lessens the automatic comparisons a user might make between a brand's online wired site to its more bare-boned wireless site. Going one step further, a separate domain for wireless content could encourage the independent evolution of mobile content--instead of making every mobile site into merely a poorer version of a wired site, content developers would be free to come up with completely new ideas for the mobile Web page and mobile-only providers would be free of any tethers back to the wired world.

But on the flip side, shouldn't we be asking ourselves whether cutting the one tie the mobile Web has to wired Internet is a good idea? Let's face it, the industry hasn't exactly done a bang-up job creating a compelling experience on the mobile Web and an even lousier job promoting it. The one thing that the WAP browser has going for it now is if you type in Yahoo.com, you'll be directed to something resembling the Yahoo site. If we create a whole new set of URLs to remember and comprehend, aren't we killing a mobile Internet that was sick to begin with?

Companies are coming down on all different sides of the equation, and surprisingly, those companies that depend on the mobile Web for their business don't necessarily think the new .mobi domain is a very good idea. Bango, a third-party seller of content from off-deck WAP sites, thinks the domain is plain unnecessary. Bango vice president Anil Malhotra pointed out that Web sites can automatically detect whether a request is coming from a mobile browser, just as it can detect whether a request is coming from Internet Explorer or Netscape, and can route the user to the appropriate site. A good site powered by a savvy media brand should adapt its site to the device its customer is using, not force its customers to adapt his or her Web browsing habits to the device, Malhotra said.

Of course, there's room for compromise: just because a user types in Yahoo's home page doesn't mean he can't be redirected to yahoo.mobi once the site detects the mobile browser. The two domains don't have to be isolated by any means. My big concern is that .mobi won't be used as a way to elevate the mobile Internet; rather it will be used to excuse the mobile Web. Instead of using the new domain to bring new innovative content formatted specifically for wireless handset and for mobile users, content providers may just opt to toss up bare-boned and unusable versions of their .com sites and then write off the whole experience as the limitations of WAP. That most certainly would kill the mobile Internet dead.

E-mail me at KFitchard@prismb2b.com.