ICANN appears to go with rival sponsor and site for next week’s meeting.
.Mobi frequently creates and sponsors mobile meeting web sites for domain conferences. ICANN.mobi was featured as the official mobile site of the last conference in Cartagena.
But it looks like ICANN is dissing .mobi for its upcoming ICANN 40 meeting in San Francisco.
This morning ICANN tweeted a link to me.icann.org, which is hosted on ICANN’s main .org web site. It’s billed as the “Official mobile site for ICANN 40, Silicon Valley”.
And who’s sponsoring it? The “mobile experience” is sponsored by Neustar, a big rival to .mobi registry Afilias.
But wait. What happens if you go to icann.mobi? It says:
dotMobi is very happy to see mobile becoming a key part of ICANN’s web strategy, and welcomes the creation of an official mobile site for the San Francisco meeting.
So icann.mobi is the official site? ICANN is the registrant for ICANN.mobi although it appears the site is run by dotMobi.
Hmmm. We have Neustar sponsoring ICANN #40’s “mobile experience” on ICANN’s (PIR) .org domain, while dotMobi calls icann.mobi the official site.
Kieren McCarthy says
I was just wondering about this myself.
I’m not sure that anyone is aware of the history of icann.mobi so it’s probably worthwhile me giving a quick rundown.
When at ICANN I wanted to do a mobile version of the conference agendas (plus twitter feeds etc) so that people could access vital information fast on their phone while walking about.
I pitched this to ICANN formally but at the time money was very tight and I couldn’t get the budget.
So I worked with dotMobi to set up a mobile site at icann.mobi. They agreed to set it up gratis if I promoted it so people used it. So that’s what we did.
Why ICANN has set up an alternative is slightly beyond me because ICANN owns the icann.mobi URL and it just redirects to the dot-mobi site.
But anyway, the good news is that ICANN has finally found the budget to set up its own version. I can only assume the use of the m.icann.org URL is due to the timetable being pulled off a database on icann.org so it’s just easier to put it on a sub-domain that set up a new URL.
But there you go. If ICANN doesn’t do it, I would like to strongly offer my thanks to dotMobi for going to alot of trouble for several years to set up and run the mobile version of the conference.
They did so for no money and no glory but just to be good community members.
Andrew Allemann says
Thanks Kieren for the back story.
Chris Parente says
Nice coverage! So I guess everyone gets to be official, so everyone is happy right? 😉
Jeremy Leader says
I don’t think that quote from icann.mobi means it’s the official site; I think it’s a graceful way of saying “we’ve been replaced, but no hard feelings”. The icann.mobi front page has a link to me.icann.org labeled “Official website”.
Andrew Allemann says
Jeremy – I hadn’t noticed that link. If I read the statement on icann.mobi in a different light, then yes, it does seem they’re saying they’ve been replaced.
Ricardo says
I don’t know but I suspect Icann requires
a fee to be the sponsored website.
And, possibly Neustar topped Affilias bid.
Kevin Murphy says
Worth noting that Neustar is spending six figures sponsoring SF at the Platinum level. Afilias is a Silver sponsor.
C.T. says
So if I’m reading this right Icann is willing to sell out it’s member TLDs for corporate sponsorship?
Wow.
Kevin Murphy says
@C.T.
Both companies are “member TLDs” in the sense you imply.
Corporate sponsorship is what keeps these meetings free to attend, remember. Even at the inflated SF prices, ICANN barely covers the cost of running them.
It would be a sad day indeed if attending ICANN meetings became a “pay-to-play” proposition. Sucking the corporate teat is unfortunately the easiest way to make sure anybody who wants to participate is able to.
Kieren McCarthy says
@Kevin: Not strictly true – corporate membership only pays a tiny part of the meetings budget.
A meeting costs approx $2 million. Corporate membership usually around $200,000.
Best thing to do to my mind is to get off the three-meeting-a-year rollercoaster; get down to 2 a year.
Will make everything more productive and save $2 million a year.
But free ICANN meetings is a philosophical decision that makes alot of sense in this context.
Kieren
C.T. says
@ Kevin
Yes, Biz is a member TLD. And it appears it’s dollars trumps Mobi’s TLD in eyes of Icann….
Sad. If Icann didn’t think Mobi was a viable TLD for mobile then why was it approved?
Kevin Murphy says
@Kieren
Looks like you’re right. I had it in my head that meetings were $1m a pop, but it looks like they’re actually closer to $2m as you say.
Still, ICANN did over $1m in sponsorships for SF, which isn’t pocket change.
Kieren McCarthy says
@Kev
Yep – I think SF is an unusual one though in that Verisign coughed up $500,000 so Bill Clinton could get his $300,000 without the ICANN Board having to explain the heavy use of community funds.
M. Menius says
me.icann.org (is this right?) over icann.mobi just seems to diminish both the integrity of icann and the intended logic of the tld system.
me.icann.org doesn’t remotely suggest mobile access.
Andrew Allemann says
@ M. Menius – usually m.icann.org would be the format. I’m not sure what the me is about. I guess it stands for mobile edition.
Mobi Search says
me. might stand for “mobile experience” – some have suggested .me could replace .mobi, or .mo could replace .mobi. But in fact overall m. is the winner, even some of the companies that launched .mobi like Ericsson have ditched their.mobi to use m. instead.
But you would expect the previous url to just redirect right to the new one.
Michele says
There are currently 3 mobile sites for the ICANN meeting in San Francisco
icann.mobi – which most attendees would expect to be the official one ..
me.icann.org – why anyone would expect to go to “me” instead of “m” is beyond me ..
And sf.cloudregistry.net which is a mobile friendly timetable of the event.
There are also a number of subtle, but quite significant difference in the content on the “official” ICANN mobile site.
Whereas the previous dotMobi powered sites were very much focussed on the community content with community photos etc., this time round it’s only linking to the official content