I’ve always been pretty cynical about the 2006 launch of .mobi.
My strategy for domain investing has long been “.com and the main extensions of countries you know well”. I did buy half-a-dozen .mobi domains when they came out but have remained a pessimist since then. It seemed like a textbook example of pump-and-dump, with people hoping to sell keyword domains for a high price, before the inevitable collapse.
Well, I’m prepared to admit for the first time that .mobi may actually have a chance. When I logged into to my Bank of America account this morning I saw a big advertisement for their online banking. The domain name was bofa.mobi. No alternatives. No use of bofa.com/mobi or mobi.bofa.com
It is possible that Bank of America may remain lonely in their use of .mobi and their experiment with the extension may not last long, but equally it is undeniably true that the outlook for .mobi is much brighter than it was yesterday.