The author doesn't seem to measure success just based on the number of registrations. For .museum, he states that even among musuems adoption has been slow and that many redirect to sites on other TLDs.
From what I can see, the author does not measure success at all. All he is doing is presenting his own opinion without facts and statistics to back it up. He seems to have a completely .com view of the internet and has also ignored the ccTLDs. When these gTLDs were introduced, the ccTLDs were not as important and .com was still the leading TLD in most countries. However in the intervening years, the ccTLDs have grown to compete with, and in some cases overtaken .com in many countries. The logic back then was that these new gTLDs would provide a more distinct TLD for various industries. Taken in numerical terms .cat could be considered failures by the author's logic. And yet .cat is a specific geographical gTLD that is doing as well as many small ccTLDs.
Regards...jmcc
---------- Post added at 08:41 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:40 AM ----------
This is what I posted as a comment on that blog post. It hasn't appeared yet:
The .xxx TLD never launched and as such it can’t actually be deemed a flop. The .museum and .aero are micro TLDs rather than massmarket TLDs with a potentially large registrant base. If I recollect correctly, the registrants have to satisfy some criteria in order to register a domain in these gTLDs. This concept might be somewhat alien to those who are only used to registering .com/net/org etc where there is no such requirement. TLDs that have specific registration rules tend to be smaller than those where anybody can register domains. This is one of the main factors in the success of .com registration volumes.
The .info is not exactly an alternative to .com TLD. And neither is it a failure. The monthly growth pattern in .info gTLD is cyclic and is driven by special offers. Many .info registrations would be brand protection registrations. The .info is actually a widely recognised gTLD in Europe. The numbers tend to disagree with your opinion that it is a flop.
Again .web runs into the reality wall. It was never launched so it effectively has not flopped.
The domain industry is a very complex one and it can be hard to understand. It is far more than .com and the gTLDs. However the biggest problem with it is people extrapolating a minimal, often purely .com, bit of knowledge to the rest of the extensions. Measuring everything by .com standards means that every TLD that does not have .com levels of registrations is a failure. However the reality is that Country Code TLDs, the ccTLDS are now eclipsing .com in some countries. The .com is a global TLD, its use is far more localised. The single element that really determines whether an extension is a success or flop is usage.
Regards...jmcc