Dotmobi offers free city.mobi names to governments

by: admin Monday, July 9th, 2007

Rating: desperation or inspiration?

by Bena Roberts
First dotmobi causes a scandal by charging too highly for dotmobi names and not dotmobi is giving them away. Apparently 650 (city.mobi) names are reserved for local governments.

From the press release
“With thousands of .mobi sites now live and more than 575,000 domains registered, consumers now understand that sites built on the .mobi domain give them the freedom to take the internet with them, wherever they go,” said Neil Edwards , CEO of dotMobi.

“dotMobi gives consumers low-cost access to information they need, where and how they need it. Cities will be able to use their .mobi sites to provide important city-related information to local citizens. These sites will also be able to provide compelling local information for visitors and help increase local tourist dollars,” Edwards added.

What we think?
We have been trying to give dotmobi a chance at GoMo News as it’s so easy to criticize – everyone else is doing it for us. But honestly and objectively it’s a good initiative as local cities can’t help but publicise themselves. This means that at the same time dotmobi and mobile domains will get a continued and much needed publicity push. The 3GSM dotmobi site was great and I used it daily during the event. If the cities can get the momentum going for this in a similar fashion then the .mobi brand will also receive a greater push.
On top of that – MCN did the mobile search for the 3GSM site and creating mobile search sites for all the cities by indexing existing local directory content could be a nice x650 earner for the company.

visit BKI Media mobi site at: bkimedia.zinadoo.mobi