Ding Ding! Round 1: WordDial's challenger emerges UPDATE1

Mobile-Ventures, a northern California mobile entertainment distribution company, has launched two websites that appear to be the dotMobi equivalent of WordDial. WordDial NZ Ltd is a New Zealand-internet concern that pioneered the concept of a directory of mobile websites organized by dotTLD generic wordnumber portals. Mobile-Ventures's websites, FindByNumbers.com and its mobile 'sister website' 8e8.mobi, effectively aim to mimic WordDial's business model despite claims of otherwise on their website - 'Our niche, however, is truly unique'.

As stated on the pair of sites, Mobile-Ventures's dotMobi information service 'provides direct access to the mobile Internet via numbers, instead of words...Users can type in the numbers associated with the keyword you're seeking content or information on. For example, "MUSIC" is represented by the numbers 68742 on your cell phone's (non-QWERTY) dial pad.'

Mobile-Ventures claims it owns several of the most valuable .mobi wordnumbers. The FindByNumbers.com site provides a list of 14 .mobi properties, several of which are indeed premium generic wordnumbers, including (the dotMobi wordnumbers for) WIN, GAMES, MUSIC, BLOG, SPORTS, CASINO, and DATE. Currently each of the .mobi portal sites is under development, however they [as portals] will be 'developed with relevant, high quality, content and information.' It is unknown how many - hundreds? thousands? - of generic .mobi wordnumbers are owned by Mobile-Ventures and what kind of revenue model they'll adopt. It's also unknown what exactly is Mobile-Ventures. Only one business entity by that name is still active according to the California Secretary of State and that seems to be for a different entity - Mobile Ventures LLC, which was formed in Nevada and lists a southern California address. Mobile-Ventures, the WordDial clone company, is the creation of, it appears, David Uhalley of Novato, Calif., who has a number of 'infant-stage' online projects in the field of personal robotics.

Two questions come to mind right away concerning FindByNumbers and 8e8. Why would someone want to create a mobile start-up based on the same business concept as WordDial when that concept has experienced such poor user adoption? Certainly the interest and speculation in dotTLD wordnumbers is on the rise. Perhaps the powers that be at Mobile-Ventures have grown a portfolio of .mobi wordnumbers and simply want to test the waters, not making big commitments in staff, advertising or further domain acquisitions. If so, then, over the next few months, if they notice quick adoption of their mobile service, then they could make the decision to go to the next step and secure a first round of venture capital financing.

The second question is why didn't WordDial begin buying up dotMobi wordnumbers during the dotMobi land rush? WordDial has amassed a very impressive portfolio of domains in only the .com TLD. Our guess is that WordDial believes that .mobi will go the way of the .ws, and .com will always be the breadwinner for both the PC and the mobile internet company. Time will tell if WordDial's gamble was a good call and if Mobile-Ventures wants to stay in the boxing ring for 'Round 2.'