1) Once you're successful you have to get the .com/.net/etc anyway. There's a lot of ambiguouty when you say "go to my site, de.lici.o.us" (which was probably the dumbest one ever), but even saying "referly" makes me think "referly.com" more than "refer.ly". If you're going to get the gccTLD, you absolutely must have sitenameio.com too. So, it doesn't really save you from "decent domain not available" -- prefixing with "get" or "my" in .com isn't any worse.
2) ccTLD has a defined meaning -- it's the country. I don't hate ccTLDs; e.g. Amazon.co.uk makes a lot of sense for the UK site of Amazon. But when people
3) They expose you to additional risk. The US can largely shut down most things, but .ly means you're exposed to Libya (JFC! an internet business voluntarily deciding to be exposed to Libya?)
4) If you really want something other than .com, you could use another TLD. Generally they all tend to be scams (I'm not aware of many .info or .biz domain names which are anything but scams, although I guess a few single-purpose/serving sites are in .info)
In fairness, IO is actually the least objectionable of all the gccTLDs, since "IO" is a pretty bogus ISO code in terms of representing a country.
ccTLDs make sense when you want to "fly the flag" of that country, too -- wikileaks.is or wikileaks.ch makes sense. All the gccTLDs have policies which are strictly worse than .com though.
And 2-letter domains (which are mostly ccTLDs) do make sense for link shorteners, particularly temporary/transient ones.
I like .info for personal point of presence sites.. I use tracker1.info as an example.
I also do like .io for previously stated reasons by others... It's techie/geeky (I/O), and it's expensive enough that the squatters have mostly stayed away.
2) ccTLD has a defined meaning -- it's the country. I don't hate ccTLDs; e.g. Amazon.co.uk makes a lot of sense for the UK site of Amazon. But when people
3) They expose you to additional risk. The US can largely shut down most things, but .ly means you're exposed to Libya (JFC! an internet business voluntarily deciding to be exposed to Libya?)
4) If you really want something other than .com, you could use another TLD. Generally they all tend to be scams (I'm not aware of many .info or .biz domain names which are anything but scams, although I guess a few single-purpose/serving sites are in .info)
In fairness, IO is actually the least objectionable of all the gccTLDs, since "IO" is a pretty bogus ISO code in terms of representing a country.
ccTLDs make sense when you want to "fly the flag" of that country, too -- wikileaks.is or wikileaks.ch makes sense. All the gccTLDs have policies which are strictly worse than .com though.
And 2-letter domains (which are mostly ccTLDs) do make sense for link shorteners, particularly temporary/transient ones.