The Mobile Conundrum
"Individuals and businesses in more than 100 countries around the world registered more than 100,000 .mobi domains in the first four days of the domain’s general availability, demonstrating a strong demand for the next evolution of the Internet." Mobile Monday
This is great. It means that there is a demand for the mobile web. Not that it was all that much in question, but this type of growth is a good thing, or is it?
The Problem
Although growth itself is a good thing, bad growth can hurt the industry. I am certainly no expert on the technology problems that currently plague the mobile internet industry, but I do have a strong belief that separating the desktop and mobile experiences is a big mistake.
Why you ask? Well, I am lazy. Along with most of my other co-users of the mobile web. I want to accomplish my task. I don't want to have to remember another url for every site that I want to visit. I want to visit the site (using the same url as I would on my home PC) and get served up the mobile version.
Doesn't this make sense? Why would we want our users to go to flickr.com, wait for it to download, then realize that they meant to go to flickr.com/mob (without the system even telling them)? or even worse flickr.mobi?
To me the idea of separation is crazy. Why are we spending time separating the two worlds, when in fact, users see them as the same. The web is the web whether I am accessing it from my phone, PDA or my desktop, so let's treat it that way.
Just my two cents.
I’m surprised when people say things like “separating the desktop and mobile experiences is a big mistake” and note that their issue is having to remember an alternate domain. I’ve seen that remark more than once and dotMobi had addressed it directly at http://dotmobi.typepad.com/dotmobi/2006/06/addressing_mobi.html.
I don’t see people having issues with, say, amazon.com versus amazon.co.uk versus amazon.fr versus amazon.co.jp, etc. I believe people understand that different domains exist to serve different purposes and meet different expectations. I don’t see .mobi differently. When I’m on a mobile / low bandwidth device, I’m looking for something specific and actionable. I’m not approaching that search with the same expectations as I would on my larger-screen, higher-bandwidth PC.
Greg, you say you see “desktop versus mobile” as two worlds. I’d agree with you if the only other domain were .com. But it’s not … it’s one of dozens designed to meet specific user expectations. I don’t see why .mobi shouldn’t be embraced in the same way — a tool to help users reach content they know will work on their phones.
I understand your point, and I think that we both want the same thing. We want a better experience while browsing the web via our mobile devices. But, I guess I don’t see why we need a new TLD to solve this problem.
The problem, as I see it, is a user expectation problem. Users (you and I included) expect to see content formated for the device that they are currently using, and rightly so. This is the problem that needs to be solved. So, is that done by creating another domain to go to? Wouldn’t you want the site to be as easy to find as it can be for your users? So why wouldn’t you want the mobile url to be the same as your desktop url?
If users go to amazon.co.uk, then are re-directed to amazon.co.uk.mobi, what is the point of the .mobi? Why couldn’t we just use the current domain?
It seems to me that it is going to be just as hard to find mobile versions of sites until we start working on the overall experience of the mobile web, not just the top level domain name.
But then again, I may be missing the point entirely…?