A few years ago, I signed up for Mobility.mobi, the leading .Mobi domain name discussion forum. Yesterday afternoon, Andres Kello, the forum founder and owner, issued a call to action to forum members and premium .Mobi domain owners.

Kello is looking to create a private Roundtable to discuss ways to accomplish one of two goals “: 1) getting this extension back on track, or 2) getting our investment back.” .Mobi domain owners are invited to participate and can show their interest in a thread Kello started on his forum.

With his permission, the entire email is posted below. (update, Kello asked me to post the contents of the thread instead). For full disclosure, I do not own any .mobi domain names.

Dear .mobi domain owners,

For over 5 years, the .mobi community has given mTLD / dotMobi the benefit of the doubt, watching in awkward silence as the company tore off — one-by-one — everything that made this extension unique, different, and exciting.

While the Mobility.mobi community was volunteering both its time and money to run an  Anti-Cybersquatting Initiative, launch the  Why.mobi Awareness Campaign, join the  mTLD Policy Advisory Board, and share  our views  and  concerns  about .mobi at the company’s request (among many other things), mTLD were busyeliminating the Trustmark  that made .mobi special, presenting one-way Webinars with  empty words  to appease the masses, telling us  one story about their finances  when their  balance sheet told another, providing  false statements regarding .mobi  on their site,  fabricating outright false forward-looking statements to its investor base, and getting  side-tracked with conflicting interests, among other things, all of which have negatively impacted our investment decisions.

(I strongly recommend everyone carefully read through all the Sticky threads in the  mTLD Registry / dotMobi Company, the  Private Discussion, and the  .mobi News and Discussion  section for more information, as a lot of this has already been discussed in great detail.)

mTLD have increasingly shown an apathy and callous indifference towards the extension that so many of us spent so much time and money trying to build, that it is time we — the .mobi community — took matters into our own hands.

If we don’t save .mobi, no one else will. And if the company isn’t going to make any efforts to commit to their promises — both implied and specific — then we all deserve to get our investments back.

As a result, we are creating a new Roundtable for all disenfranchised .mobi domain owners dedicated to either of those goals: 1) getting this extension back on track, or 2) getting our investment back.  Which of those it will ultimately be will depend solely on mTLD.

We’ve waited far too long. We’ve pardoned far too much. mTLD have taken advantage of both to become complacent and apathetic. What they fail to realize is that we’ve got nothing left to lose.

One way or another, things are going to change.

So if you are a .mobi domain owner and feel mTLD / dotMobi are leading this extension irresponsibly down a path to obscurity and want to change things, then please post here. There will be no discussions here, the purpose of this thread is simply to request membership to the Roundtable. Also, no PM’s please, this is not the time to be private about your disapproval, discontentment, and dissatisfaction. This is time to speak up.

One week from now, I will invite everyone who has requested membership in this thread to the private Roundtable on Mobility to discuss our next step.

Please spread the word.

Sincerely,

Andres Kello
Mobility.mobi, Owner

Crain’s Detroit Business is reporting that Barnes & Noble was the winning bidder for the domain names of the now shuttered and bankrupt Borders, which I assume includes Borders.com . In addition, it was reported that B&N also bought Waldenbooks domain names as well, another book store that had been owned by Borders.

The auctions for Borders’ assets sold for a total of $15.8 million, although the totals weren’t broken down by individual units. Barnes & Noble was not the only buyer though, according to Crain’s. The sale was handled by Hilco Trading LLC.

According to the article, “Hilco said Barnes & Noble was one buyer of the assets, which included “a global portfolio of trademarks; the Borders, Waldenbooks and Brentano’s trade names; Internet domain names; and the Borders.com e-commerce website.””

Barnes & Noble also owns Books.com, which forwards to the company’s primary website.

I had a post written discussing the Business Week article about the TeaParty.com domain name that is owned by a Canadian band of the same name. The band has owned it since the early 1990s, which is pretty cool considering that there are many great domain names that haven’t been registered for that long.

Anyway, Mike Berkens wrote a post pretty much covering what I wrote, so I am going to change the direction up a bit. Instead, I want to know what you think TeaParty.com is worth in light of the Tea Party movement, and I created a poll to find out.

I’d be interested in knowing your thoughts on whether the band should sell the domain name. If the Tea Party is a short lived “movement,” it could turn out to be a KerryEdwards.com situation, where the domain owner turned down a large offer and the domain name returned to its minimal value after the Kerry Edwards campaign ended. Should the Tea Party pick up more steam and become more mainstream, the domain name could have more value.

The band could move to something like TeaPartyBand.com or TeaPartyMusic.com or something they could hand register. What are your thoughts?

I was browsing through the Apple App Store this morning to see what domain name related apps you can purchase for your iPhone and/or iPad. There were more than I expected.

If you’ve used any of the apps listed below in ABC order, let others know what you think of them. I have an iPad but haven’t downloaded any of these apps yet.

• Deep Whois (free)
• DN Forum Mobile ($4.99)
• Domain Scout (free)
• Domainster Instant Domain Search and Suggestion ($.99)
• Domain Pro (free)
• Domain Storm by Network Solutions (free)
• DomainTools Whois, Thumbnail, Availability (free)
• Domain Tracker ($.99)
• GoDaddy Mobile Domain Manager (free)
• iDomain Monitor ($2.99)
• Instant Domain Checker (free)
• Name.com (free)
• NameDrive

Did I miss any apps that you’d recommend to others? If so, what purpose do they serve and how much are they?

It’s very difficult to predict what technology trends will be popular and which will fizzle. Buying domain names based on future technology trends is a bit like playing the lottery… except there are guaranteed winning tickets with the lottery.

Have a look at the first sentence from this New York Post article from September 5:

“The next big thing in TV — 3-D — is proving such a bomb with consumers, the first victim may be ESPN’s sports-in-3-D channel.”

Judging by the thousands of 3D domain names for sale on Sedo, Afternic, and other domain sales platforms, it looks like there are going to be a lot more losers than winners in the 3D domain lottery.  Based on what I’ve seen, some people justify these purchases as $8 lottery tickets, which is fine I suppose, but when people buy dozens or hundreds of names to cover their bases, it becomes a big problem.

I don’t want to sound preachy here, but think about the reality here when you’re buying domain names. There are gamblers and domain investors. Investing in domain names can be a bit of a gamble, but it shouldn’t be a total gamble.

When you buy a domain name, are you investing or playing the lottery?