As of September 26th, 2006, the general public can have a go at purchasing the newest Top-Level Domain, .mobi. As the name implies, .mobi is restricted for sites that adhere to mobile-compatibility style guidelines. So what's all the fuss about .mobi? Well for me at least, I find it to be an opportunity to buy out a bunch of popular domains first. I just purchased the .mobi's for some popular mobile sites.
It only makes sense that we should organize mobile sites as mobile computing and cell phones become faster, cheaper and more usable online. However, considering that the TLD is going to be for mobile sites I think that they should have made the TLD a bit shorter - 4 letters is a bit much for a mobile TLD. Since .mobi is a sponsored TLD from a consortium of corporations like Google, Microsoft and Nokia, the use of .mobi will be enforced by "challenge process". I'm curious to see how that plays out because there will indubitably be more than a few people that use .mobi for regular, non-mobile friendly sites.
The restrictions set forth on the new .mobi domain will set it apart from other domians.
.mobi is more than a domain; it is a set of standards that ensure that content delivered to mobile phones is appropriate to those devices -- in short, content that is quick to download and does not incur above-average data download costs. dotMobi blog
Godaddy has a landrush deal where they will attempt to secure a .mobi for you at a price of 29.99; fairly expensive for a domain. They also require that you purchase the domain for 2 years, so the charges will rack up. September 26th to October 10th is the landrush period, whereas regular .mobi registrations are from October 11th and on. It is likely that the domain registration price will go down to something more reasonable after the landrush period. If you've got a burning desire to secure that popular .mobi domain, acting on the landrush period is probably your best bet, if you can cope with the high cost.
If you take only one thing from this article, the most important part is that the new .mobi top-level domain sets a precedent by requiring that sites follow certain standards. Imagine if similar restrictions were held on all TLDs such as .com, and that ICANN had the ability to revoke your domain if you ran a splog. So much for my Utopian reverie.