Nine years after first drafts for the Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) were published (I remember reading one in 1997), mobile phones received their own Internet Top Level Domain .MOBI.

On September 26th, 2006 the Land Rush for the domain started which allows anyone to register a .MOBI domain. Yesterday, two days later, Pinkard Alan “Pinky” Brand, who works for the .MOBI registry was kind enough to find some time to answer some questions and share some information with us.

Frank: Hi Pinky - thank you for taking the time today to talk to me about .MOBI.

Let’s start by talking about yourself, your position and how long you have been working with the .MOBI registry.

Pinky: Hi Frank. Glad to be here. I’ve been in the domain name industry for over 10 years. I co-founded idNames, a corporate ccTLD registration company back in 1996 with Marc Ostrofsky. We sold that business to Network Solutions in 1998 and it became idNames from Network Solutions. VeriSign eventually gobbled up NSI as you know and the business got split two ways. One part became known as VeriSign Digital Brand Management Services (DBMS) and the other part got integrated into what is now known as the Name Store at the VeriSign registry.

I started another corporate registrar called Arcemus in 2002 and sold that to Iron Mountain in 2004. Now I’m enjoying being involved in the other side of the business as Director, New Markets for the dotMobi registry and have been with them since June 1 of this year.

Frank: The registry just started the Land Rush registrations two days ago. Could you give us an insight an how many names were registered and what the most popular requests were for?

Pinky: We registered 75,000 new names before the first day of Land Rush was over. We have over 100,000 names as of this morning [Sept 28th]. The most popular requests in the first few hours were, but are not in any order:

loan, hoteles, kabu, mytv, hostels, 321 and cab

I like hostels and cab… both good names for people on the move and needing info while on the move

Frank: Yes, good choices. It’s also very interesting to see a Spanish name in this group.

Some of the names are now in closed auction in some of the systems (i.e. Pool), while I’ve also seen some of them already listed for sale.

Pinky: Yes, I’ve noticed some names listed on Pool, like 654.mobi and 963.mobi for 150K each.

Frank: What were the first names registered?

Pinky: In order, the names registered in the first few nanoseconds were: epag.mobi, call.mobi, banking.mobi, kandis.mobi and mp3s.mobi

Frank: It appears that the registrations were distributed pretty evenly between the different registrars. Was this one of the goals of the launch?

Pinky: We were interested in a level playing field for the registrars and not anything similar to the situation that developed for .eu. Over 90 registrars participated and registrations flowed in from about 100 countries. Of course there are several registrars that appeared to market .mobi more heavily than others and they ended up delivering good numbers.

Frank: It seems that you have achieved the goal of a level playing field - do you have any data on the distribution of Land Rush names across registrars?

Pinky: Unfortunately I don’t have the data yet available to share, but I would characterize as fairly distributed.

Frank: There’s a list of premium names that will be auctioned by the registry. Could you explain how this list was compiled and what the reasoning is for making those “premium” names? It’s quite a unique feature for a registry launch, plus there have been many discussions with regards to registry pricing lately.

Pinky: We have compiled a list of approximately 5,700 commonly used words and phrases that we set aside for equitable allocation other than in the traditional first, come, first-served basis. We intend to allocate those names via auction and RFP processes beginning late in October. This is expected to be done in quarterly phases over the next year or so. The process was approved by ICANN with input from our Policy Advisory Board and WIPO.

Frank: I am sure many of my readers will be watching this process closely, since it’s a first for a registry to offer domains in this fashion.

Pinky: It is new and different and that is why I like working with .mobi. We really want to try to level the playing field and make sure that users of mobile content see content when they navigate to a mobi site. I’ve dealt with many new TLD roll outs, but I think .mobi is different because it is extremely relevant to improving the end user’s experience, which up until now pretty much sucked.

Frank: Now I noticed that you were one of the sponsors and speakers at the Domain Fest LA event. This also appears to be quite unique for a registry. It’s unheard of that a registry addresses domainers directly and tries to get them to pick up a specific TLD. What connects registry and domainers/domain investors, and how does the .MOBI registry view this space?

Pinky: For domainers, it is an interesting opportunity to learn and develop business models based on mobile content and mobile search. We were interested in Domain Fest because it was a valid effort by the Domainer Industry to get further educated and to hopefully get the Domainer community beyond the public perception that it is comprised of cybersquatters. I don’t think that is true.

Frank: I agree with you there.

Pinky: As a registry, we want to learn more about Domainers and why they do what they do…and what motivates them to buy, sell, hold and develop content. It has been ignored by the industry for too long. Domaining and PPC is not just a fad.

Domainers represent a lot of commerce, plus they tend to be entrepreneurial.

I’m a serial entrepreneur and have a lot respect for people who try to develop business models against public opinion and negative perception.

My old business partner Marc Ostrofsky used to be considered public enemy #1 when he bought and sold business.com. He was sometimes branded as cybersquatter. Could not be further from the truth. Marc is an honest guy and was one of the first people to get large business and TM holders to wake up to what is going on with domain names. He has a huge portfolio and now presides over iREIT. Rather legit if you ask me.

Frank: We seem to have a lot in common when it comes to our views of the domainer industry :)

Another first is that there are special requirements regarding the design of the websites in order to make them accessible for mobile devices. Are you aware of any traffic aggregators (providers of parked pages) that support the .mobi switch on guide? I have heard about some companies introducing website builders specifically for .MOBI sites.

Pinky: Yes, several dotMobi registrars are offering parked pages automatically with registration. For example, GoDaddy has set up parked pages and I believe is offering to build mobile pages for its registrant customers. Dotster and DomainPeople will build pages too. I know of some aftermarket folks that are developing some sophisticated stuff, but professional courtesy prevents me from revealing just who they are at this time…they have not announced yet.

Frank: I guess we will have to stay tuned to find out more details on this.

Pinky: I’d also like to make sure your readers understand that it is NOT required to have an active page or site up when you register a .mobi name. Anyone can register…you don’t have to be in the mobile business to get a name.

Frank: Yes, that is important to note indeed.

In the long term cell phone will also be able to display more advanced pages, so I would imagine that the Switch On guide will also be revised and updated.

Pinky: Yes, the Switch On guide is important. There are only 3 rules to follow once a site is up…the rest are just best practice suggestions. Domainers and/or their developers may want to check it out. Content for mobile screens is different than for a 17″ screen on your desk.

We are working on rolling out a developer’s toolkit to make it even easier. There are companies out there like RoundPoint that do mobile web site dev.

Also note we don’t police content. We just want to make sure that the .mobi landing page, which could be a PPC page, is compliant. What happens after that is the web site owner’s business.

Frank: One topic that has been discussed quite a bit with regards to the launch is how the registry will promote the .MOBI brand. Can we expect any cell phone manufacturer to add a “.MOBI” button to their cell phones?

Pinky: With 13 investors behind us like Google, Microsoft, Vodafone, Nokia, Samsung, T-Mobile etc. you can bet we’ll be spending to promote the brand. We also will work with anyone that is interested in promoting a mobile web site. We’re interested in making sure the registrant is successful with mobile.

You could see buttons on phones with .mobi, but I cannot confirm such a thing at this time.

I think where users will see it is on content that springs up and in mobile search. Google just rolled out AdWords for mobile a few weeks ago. As more people whip out their mobiles to find a decent restaurant or coffee joint, advertisers’ messages will be in their face, and could be geo-targeted someday since more phones will have GPS.

Frank: So are there any active .MOBI sites at this early point in the game?
Pinky: There are .mobi sites already up from huge major companies to tiny start ups: http://businessweek.mobi, http://msn.mobi, http://live.mobi, http://utexas.mobi (my alma mater), http://flirtbox.mobi (dating and advice site)
http://rolls-royce.mobi, http://1-800-candles.mobi, http://kicker.mobi , http://neckermann.mobi (German mail-order and Internet company).

1-800-candles.mobi is an attempt at PPC, but the sites redirect to some .com sites that end up not rendering correctly on a mobile phone… This is one challenge and one major opportunity for domainers and the registrars…. Get your top linked sites to register a .mobi name so they don’t miss out on the mobile PPC ecosystem that is starting to develop.

Some have approached us directly. The Internet world wants to know more about mobile, and the mobile world wants to know more about the Internet. That’s where we come in.

Keep in mind that just taking your existing .com content and re-tooling it for a .mobi site may not be the best solution. What users want, need and will tolerate when accessing info on a 2″ mobile screen is different than when viewing in the comfort of their home or office on a 17″ screen. Pop-ups, frames, reversed out text and some colors would be extremely annoying to average mobile user.

We have an emulator on our site that shows anyone what their current PC based site would look like on a mobile… if it sucks then you need .mobi.

Frank: Is the registry planning any activities to promote the TLD to end users? I.e. incentives to promote individual sites, etc.

Pinky: Yes we are planning some campaigns that will be kind of “in your face” to certain markets around the planet. Unlike other registries, and what makes us a bit unique I think, is that we are willing to work with end user registrants that are serious.

Frank: That seems unique indeed.

I know that you have other obligations demanding your attention now, so thank you very much for your time Pinky.

DomainEditorial.com will continue to observe the development of the .MOBI TLD - please let us know if you have any interesting news to share.

Pinky: Thanks very much for your questions Frank. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if there are further follow up questions.

Internet REIT (iREIT), a leader in direct search and Internet advertising, today announced that Craig Snyder has joined the company as its new chief operating officer. Snyder brings over twenty years of leadership, operations and business development success in multiple industries to iREIT, including senior roles at Marchex, InfoSpace, Citibank, Pepsi Cola and the United States Navy.

[Press Release]

Ocean Tomo, known for it’s Intellectual Property auctions will be auctioning the following domain names:

• Lot 51: InternetCoach.com and Internet Coach trademark
• Lot 52: PaperlessApp.com, being sold by IBM
• Lot 58: Alerts.com, being sold by IBM, expected value $50,000

[via DomainNameWire]

The Internet Traffic Association (INTRAS), which was mentioned in iREIT’s press releases now has a website: http://intras.org/.

So far the following (founding) members have been mentioned publicly in a press release regarding the new ICANN gTLD registry agreements: Internet REIT, Inc. and Name Administration, Inc..

The Internet Traffic Association is a business organization made up of individuals and companies that own, buy, sell, resell, host and manage Internet traffic which comes from search engines, domain names and Internet links.

Our mission is to promote the value and benefits of Internet traffic, including the value of buying direct navigation traffic, on behalf of our membership - to the media, the advertising market, government and regulatory authorities around the world.

Valley Wag says: You can survive without owning the .COM and lists some examples where .COM is not used as the primary domain. Yes, sure you can survive, but can you afford to “leak” traffic to the .COM variation of your site? If you come up with a new site, try to buy the .COM, even if you plan to use another TLD as the main domain; especially if you are targeting a North American and/or international audience.

Oversee.net […] today announced it has acquired 10 domain portfolios over the last two months. The Company continues to aggressively build its portfolio of successful domain names and then quickly monetizes them. Oversee monetizes more than one million domain names per month and has more than 100 million unique visitors per month.

[Press Release]

The .travel registry (Tralliance) wants to add a Wildcard to their DNS, which would redirect any failed queries to their search.travel website. The search on the site currently shows ask.com search results in combination with “.travel authenticated” sites as well as some sponsored results.

While reminding us and others of Verisign’s Sitefinder attempt to capitalise on failed DNS lookups, Ed Cespedes [chief executive of TheGlobe.com Inc, which owns Tralliance, according to the article in Computer Business Review Online] reassures us that this is not about the money:

“This is certainly not like Site Finder,” Cespedes said. “This is not a money thing, it’s about making sure people don’t think .travel isn’t there or is broken.”

According to Cespedes, .travel receives a high percentage of failed lookups every day. This could make people think that .travel, not a very high-profile suffix to being with, doesn’t work.

American Airlines, for example, does not have a live .travel, so anybody trying to visit www.americanairlines.travel, which one would assume would exist, may think that .travel itself is broke.

“I don’t know the exact numbers, but rest assured that even with a small [top-level domain] like ours it’s happening millions of times a day,” Cespedes said. There are tens of thousands of domains in .travel, he said, making it substantially smaller than .com’s 50 million.

According to Cespedes, search.travel would not serve up advertising when users mistakenly wind up there. That would be a switch from the official proposal filed with ICANN, which has screenshots of pages filled with ads.

The current search.travel implementation also features sponsored search results on the side.

Additional information:

• Tralliance ICANN proposal
• ICANN comments

• September 7th-8th, 2006: DomainVermarkterForum, Munich, Germany
• September 13th, 2006: DomainerDinner in Toronto, Canada. Contact me for details.
• September 20th-22nd, 2006: DomainFestLA, LA, USA
• September 29th-30th, 2006: SedoPro’s Partner Forum, Cologne, Germany Maastricht, The Netherlands
• October 24th-28th, 2006: Targeted TRAFFIC tradeshow, Hollywood, FL, USA

Associated Cities interview Chicago.com founder Josh Metnick. Associated Cities is an organization for owners of city domains.

[via DomainNameWire]

As you might have noticed in the last couple of weeks, some registrars (including my employer, Tucows) have already made the switch: The COM and NET registry, operated by Verisign, is switching from RRP (Registry Registrar Protocol) to EPP (Extensible Provisioning Protocol). Now what does this mean for our domains?
The COM and NET registry used to use the RRP protocol for domain registrations, transfers and renewals. As per ICANN mandate the gTLDs are supposed to switch to using the EPP in the future. This is the same protocol that is already being used for TLDs such as .ORG, .INFO and .BIZ today. Basically this is only a backend change, but there are some changes you will notice:

1. Transfers

The main change for transfers is that you will be needing authorization codes in order to initiate the transfer at a gaining registrar. Your new registrar will submit the transfer request to the registry, together with the authorization code.The main challenge here, especially for owners of many domains, is that different registrars provide you access to the authorization codes by different means. While the registrars are obligated to provide you (the registrant or admin contact) with that information, the methods for retrieving it differ from registrar to registrar. Some registrars allow you to view and edit the authorization code on a domain by domain basis, some have the same code across all of a registrant’s domains and others require you to request that information from their support staff via a manual request.

The time of the switchover is especially interesting during the time of transition, since not both registrars might have migrated to EPP yet. For example, if you initiate a transfer from a non-EPP registrar (one that still uses the older RRP protocol), you will not need to provide an authorization code. The same is valid if your new registrar has not changed over to EPP yet. But if the new and old registrar have both switched over to the new protocol, you will require and authorization code.

The original deadline for the completion of the migration was October 1st, 2006, but it has now been changed to a target date. However, as of the end of the month of October, registrars will no longer be able to connect to the registry using the RRP protocol. Thus the final deadline is the end of October 2006.

2. Whois Status

The whois status output will change as follows:

RRP status (old)	EPP mapping (new)
ACTIVE	OK
Registrar-LOCK	Client Update prohibited Client Transfer prohibited Client Delete prohibited
Registry-HOLD	Server HOLD Server Transfer prohibited Server Delete prohibited Server Update prohibited
Registry LOCK	Server Transfer prohibited Server Delete prohibited Server Update prohibited
PendingDelete	Pending Delete
PendingTransfer	Pending Transfer
RedemptionPeriod	Redemption Period
PendingRestore	Pending Restore

Source: Verisign

You might know that other registries, such as ORG also hold all the contact information of the registrant (domain owner) at the registry level in a so-called thick registry. This will not be the case for the COM/NET registry. The contact information will remain with the registrar and the registry whois will continue to include a pointer to the whois of the sponsoring registrar, since the migration (including the change to a unified format) of this information to the registry level would be a huge undertaking, considering the amount of names registered.