The domain name mobi is a

generic top-level domain Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet. A top-level domain is the last level of ev ...

(gTLD) in the

Domain Name System The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to ...

(DNS) of the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

. Its name is derived from the adjective ''mobile''. The domain was approved by

ICANN The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) is an American multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces ...

on 11 July 2005, and is managed by the mTLD global registry. It was originally financially backed and sponsored by

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. I ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washingt ...

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...

, Samsung,

Ericsson (lit. "Telephone Stock Company of LM Ericsson"), commonly known as Ericsson, is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm. The company sells infrastructure, software, and services in informa ...

Vodafone Vodafone Group plc () is a British multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates services in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. , Vodafo ...

T-Mobile T-Mobile is the brand name used by some of the mobile communications subsidiaries of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG in the Czech Republic ( T-Mobile Czech Republic), Poland ( T-Mobile Polska), the United States (T-M ...

, Telefónica Móviles,

Telecom Italia Mobile Gruppo TIM, legally TIM S.p.A. (formerly Telecom Italia S.p.A.), also known as the TIM Group in English, is an Italian telecommunications company with headquarters in Rome, Milan, and Naples, (with the Telecom Italia Tower) which provides fix ...

Orascom Telecom Global Telecom Holding S.A.E. (GTH; formerly Orascom Telecom Holding) is a holding company based in Amsterdam, and a subsidiary of the multinational telecommunications services company VEON. GTH previously owned mobile network operators in multip ...

GSM Association The GSM Association (commonly referred to as 'the GSMA' or ''Global System for Mobile Communications'', originally ''Groupe Spécial Mobile'') is an industry organisation that represents the interests of mobile network operators worldwide. More ...

Hutchison Whampoa Hutchison Whampoa Limited (HWL) was an investment holding company based in Hong Kong. It was a Fortune Global 500 company and one of the largest companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. HWL was an international corporation with a dive ...

Syniverse Technologies Syniverse is a telecommunications company based in the United States. It was founded in 1987 as a GTE business unit called GTE Telecommunications Services Inc. The company’s global headquarters is in Tampa, Florida, with regional headquarters i ...

, and

Visa Visa most commonly refers to: * Visa Inc., a US multinational financial and payment cards company ** Visa Debit card issued by the above company ** Visa Electron, a debit card ** Visa Plus, an interbank network *Travel visa A visa (from th ...

, with an executive from each company serving on mTLD's board of directors. In February 2010,

Afilias Afilias, Inc. is a US corporation that is the registry operator of the .info, .mobi and .pro top-level domain, service provider for registry operators of .org, .ngo, .lgbt, .asia, .aero, and a provider of domain name registry services for co ...

acquired mTLD Top-Level Domain Ltd. (known publicly as "dotMobi"). In March 2017, .mobi became an unsponsored generic top-level domain, using the same terms offered to new gTLDs.

Operation

DotMobi domain names have been available for registration by the public since 26 September 2006. dotMobi engaged with the

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working t ...

Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) to help formulate the MWI Best Practices for mobile content. The practices outlined a number of ways to achieve good user experiences on mobile Web-enabled devices, and recognized several methods of implementing these practices. mTLD has released a free testing tool called Ready.mobi (later ''mobiForge'') to analyze the mobile readiness of websites. It does a free page analysis and gives a .mobi Ready score from 1 to 5. This report tests the mobile-readiness of the site using dotMobi's recommended best practices. dotMobi does not itself mandate any particular technology, but does recommends that .mobi sites produce user experiences consistent with their guidelines and specifically optimized for mobile phones.

mobiForge

"mobiForge" is a mobile development and

design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...

resource site run dotMobi. mobiForge functions both as a platform to announce product updates to the developer community and

discussion forums An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...

for each of dotMobi's products and services. mobiForge was launched in November 2006 as dev.mobi. It was announced at the Mobile 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, along with the launch of ready.mobi. dev.mobi underwent a major

redesign A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...

in September 2008 and was rebranded as mobiForge and moved to mobiForge.com

Reception

Originally dotMobi focused on promoting the creation of two separate device-dependent

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

s, one desktop-based and the other mobile-based. Because of this, Tim-Berners Lee brought up concerns of excess Internet content redundancy. Providing content tailored to particular devices can be done by other means than a specific TLD, such as using hostnames within an existing domain,

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, w ...

content negotiation Content negotiation refers to mechanisms defined as a part of HTTP that make it possible to serve different versions of a document (or more generally, representations of a resource) at the same URI, so that user agents can specify which version fi ...

cascading style sheets Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone tec ...

, or other forms of adaptation. The popularization of responsive web design has caused the domain name to be relocated for use on mobile services and

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on de ...

s websites.

References

External links

IANA .mobi whois information

.mobi Registry Agreement with ICANN

mobiForge
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mobi Generic top-level domains Computer-related introductions in 2005 sv:Toppdomän#Generiska toppdomäner

Operation

mobiForge

Reception

See also

References

External links