April 4, 2007 | Posted By : Liam Eagle at 7:46 PM PERMALINK | Blog Comments (0)

A Few More Notes on the Hostway-Affinity Deal

As you might have already read, Hostway announced today that it has acquired Affinity Internet, adding another company to the short list of Major Players in the shared Web hosting space.

I spoke to John Lee, Hostway's vice president of global marketing and Andrew Schroepfer, president of Tier 1 Research today, which is probably evident from this feature.

As is sometimes the case, there was interesting discussion in both conversations that didn't quite fit into the scope of the story.

One interesting thing that came up was that John Lee, in discussion of the deal, said "I believe this effectively puts us as the largest shared hosting provider in the world. . . in terms of customer count, as well as revenue."

Hostway-plus-Affinity is without question one of the big players in shared hosting now, but this seems like a bit of an exaggeration. But more interestingly, it is illustrative of the fact that the size and influence of a Web hosting company can be hard to define.

Andy Schroepfer agrees:

"As you well know, there are a billion ways to define this industry. If you want to do domains or servers or. . ."

At any rate, Hostway is now of the scale where that kind of assertion, though perhaps not 100 percent accurate is within the realm of believability. What a difference a day makes.

Also interesting were some of the lesser-known assets of both companies, which John Lee discussed:

"I think something that might not be obvious is that as a combined company, we actually have a pretty robust channel partnership, in terms of helping broadband providers both on the telco and the cable side, and online portals, to offer value-added Web services. I can't name names, but as a combined force, we'll have some of the biggest names in North America, and be the private label Web hosting provider to those providers, so that they can offer Web hosting and other Web services, such as hosted Exchange and online backup to their customers, to add more value to their broadband products.

That's probably the biggest part of the not-so-obvious news."

TAGS: hostway, affinity internet, acquisition

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October 17, 2006 | Posted By : Liam Eagle at 6:00 PM PERMALINK | Blog Comments (7)

My Dot Mobi Question

Last week, we reported that Go Daddy had added a function to its Web site building software Website Tonight that supports the building of sites formatted according to the rules of the .mobi registry.

In Go Daddy's press release, CEO Bob Parsons said:

"With more than a billion wireless phone users estimated worldwide, there will be more and more demand for mobile content. Incorporating .mobi templates into WebSite Tonight is another example of an innovation available only from Go Daddy to help you get in on the mobile Internet revolution."

Go Daddy is one of many hosts offering this kind of tool. Hostway, for example, launched a .mobi site builder in August.

Both Go Daddy and Hostway are part of a pretty significant group of Internet companies expressing their excitement about the new domain. The distinction, in this case, is that it's a domain extension that classifies its content by audience, rather than by company type or country. And, of course, that the registry intends to enforce certain standards for mobile-formatted Web sites.

I'll admit I'm a mobile browsing novice. I use my cell phone for phone calls and the occasional text message, but never to browse the Web. That may be because I'm rarely more than an hour or two away from sitting down at a computer. I have once or twice used the cell phone to call somebody I knew was by a computer and asked them to look something up for me.

I'm interested, however, in the execution of mobile sites. So I asked a friend to recommend a couple. He came up with kicker.mobi, BMW.mobi and weather.mobi. All are very well put together sites, but they fail to answer a pretty basic question I have about the .mobi domain.

That is: what's the point?

Bear with me. I'm not condemning the .mobi domain. I'm actually asking the question.

I type "google.mobi" (a site that strikes me as a potentially useful addition to a mobile phone) into my PC's Web browser, and I am redirected to www.google.com/mobile/, a site that explains, among other things, that I can access Google's mobile search by keying "google.com" into my phone.

Google, by most accounts a pretty forward thinking Web company, doesn't seem to have invested a tremendous amount of energy into employing its .mobi domain extension.

Of course, Google built its mobile-formatted site before the .mobi domain ever existed. But it appears to have solved the matter of having the mobile site happily coexist with Google proper on the .com domain via a fairly simple redirect. I could be wrong, but I'm assuming that recognizing the mobile OS/browser and redirecting those users to the mobile-formatted site is within the means of a modestly sophisticated developer.

So yes, it makes sense for a company with a large, complex Web site, basically impossible to browse from a cell phone - let's say Cisco - to create a mobile version of that site, formatted for viewing on mobile devices and containing a limited selection of information (it has).

And it makes sense for that company to register the .mobi extension of its regular Web address (it has) and point that .mobi address at its mobile-formatted site (it has).

But given the development that has already taken place, and the relative simplicity (I'm assuming) of adding that redirect for mobile devices to the .com site, it seems to me that the company would point mobile users arriving at its .com site to the mobile formatted site (and, once again, it has).

So since keying either cisco.com or cisco.mobi into my phone's browser brings me to the same site (it does; I checked), that would make the .mobi extension, in this case, redundant.

While I have no trouble believing that companies like Go Daddy and Hostway are genuinely enthusiastic about new browsing technologies and the development of the mobile Web, I also have little trouble believing that those companies, both registrars offering .mobi domains, are equally enthusiastic about the opportunity to take $14.99 per year and $35 per year, respectively, for every .mobi domain registered.

Back, then, to my question. Is there a circumstance under which only a .mobi domain will do?

Maybe there is a service of particular use to mobile users with no pc-based equivalent. But wouldn't a .com do in that case, too?

I'm asking. If anybody can offer an example of a site that would be better off on a .mobi domain (hypothetical is fine; real-world example with link is even better), then please, by all means, avail yourself of the "post comment" link.

Tags: domains, dot-mobi, mobile web

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