Mobile porn gets its own domain name

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 05 February 2008 03:15

Your IT - Entertainment

'Adult' entertainment delivered to mobile phones is tipped to be a big dollar earner and one lucky content provider will be able to lay claim to the porn.mobi domain name, which is coming up for auction on 20 February. The name is one of 14 'adult' and entertainment related .mobi domain names being auction by Moniker's T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West live auction on 20 February on behalf of dotMobi, the company responsible for managing the .mobi top level domain, designed to be used solely for web sites optimised for access from mobile devices.

According to dotMobi, the release of porn.mobi has been "highly anticipated." Consolation prize will be naked.mobi; and for those wanting more mainstream entertainment sites, broadway.mobi, cards.mobi, geneology.mobi, hollywood.mobi, lottery.mobi, tickets.mobi and vegas.mobi are also on offer.

The auction is dotMobi's third and its first through Moniker. Its first auction was held last September via Sedo (Search Engine for Domain Offers), a US based online marketplace for buying and selling domain names and websites. It was claimed to be a 'major success' raising more that $US850,000. Top selling names were hosting.mobi which sold for $US101,000, and bank.mobi and download.mobi each of which fetched in excess of $US50,000.

Following that auction, Trey Harvin, CEO of dotMobi, said: "Already, more than 7.5 million pages of .mobi content have been created, many of them using tools that dotMobi makes available for free like http://ready.mobi and http://site.mobi. The auction proceeds allow dotMobi to make tools like these available to encourage the growth of the mobile web."

With its second auction of travel and dating related names - in October 2007 and also via Sedo - dotMobi was getting slightly more risqué: names on offer included car.mobi, gps.mobi, gay.mobi, kiss.mobi, love.mobi and map.mobi.

That auction also generated close to $US8000,000 and dotMobi engaged Sedo for a third auction in December of 100 leisure and sports and alcohol-related names incuding vodka.mobi, tequila.mobi and wine.mobi.

That was a disaster. In its wake, dotMobi issued a statement saying: "Sedo's systems problems at the end of the auction created confusion for everyone (including dotMobi) and the result was unsatisfying for us and community participants...Therefore, we are ...exercising our own rights to void the auction results of December, and plan to conduct a new auction beginning January 23, 2008." It has given no indication since that this auction has been held.