Interesting thread. The curious part is why some of you believe just using sub-domains is the right strategy for usability online. Many Internet users get confused with [name.brand.tld], and it's not easy to hunt-and-peck the punctuation marks and the longer names on a mobile phone.
It seems more intuitive to type in brand.tld than prefix.brand.tld. And that's partly why some brands are considering applying for their own .brand tld to further simplify usability & branding.
As to the relative "usefulness" of a top level domain - of the 94+ million.com/.net domains out there, very few are actually "useful", and most people only go to an absurdly small fraction of them. With over 1.5 billion internet users, what's "useless" for you may well be "useful" for another.
.Mobi originally set out to become a convention for mobility online. The world is slowly but surely moving from a wired internet to a mobile one, and I believe that .mobi has a credible opportunity to own a spot in that world (and that's part of why we bought the company). Time will tell, of course!
.mobi
Interesting thread. The curious part is why some of you believe just using sub-domains is the right strategy for usability online. Many Internet users get confused with [name.brand.tld], and it's not easy to hunt-and-peck the punctuation marks and the longer names on a mobile phone.
It seems more intuitive to type in brand.tld than prefix.brand.tld. And that's partly why some brands are considering applying for their own .brand tld to further simplify usability & branding.
As to the relative "usefulness" of a top level domain - of the 94+ million .com/.net domains out there, very few are actually "useful", and most people only go to an absurdly small fraction of them. With over 1.5 billion internet users, what's "useless" for you may well be "useful" for another.
.Mobi originally set out to become a convention for mobility online. The world is slowly but surely moving from a wired internet to a mobile one, and I believe that .mobi has a credible opportunity to own a spot in that world (and that's part of why we bought the company). Time will tell, of course!
Ram Mohan [afilias, Twitter @rmohan123]