Despite being an industry-sponsored TLD, the industry does not want it. It doesn't help in blocking content for young children. It doesn't help adults find content they want. It accomplishes nothing but take money.
I expect it will have far less than 1/10 the registrations .co had in the first year.
I expect .xxx will be 10x as popular as .co. .co is just a cheap mispelling of .com that doesn't mean anything to average Americans. .xxx has meaning and value (parents can block the whole TLD for their kids).
Obviously, its going to be a long time (ever?) before anything touches .com. But amongst the also-rans, I think .xxx will be a hit.
Not so long if the US government continues seizing domain names.
Edit: I mean, I've heard people argue that it would help the porn sites curry favor with parents, but I really have a tough time imagining that actually turning into more money for the porn sites (though I admit that I really know nothing about the industry).
I'm sure they wouldn't.
My assumption, which could be wrong, is that many adults want to access porn websites, but don't want their kids to. For them, requiring a password to visit any .xxx site would be very user friendly.
So whether the porn industry wanted it, if the market wanted it, it would happen.
What do you mean by "if the market wanted it"? Unless people actually stopped paying for porn on non-.xxx domains, or they payed more for porn on .xxx domains, then there is no market force encouraging porn companies to change what they're already doing.
(Rant: The personification of "the market" to the point where it is capable of "wanting" things on its own initiative is a pet peeve of mine. It's not a person. It doesn't have desires. Market economics is a descriptive theory, not a theological statement.)
Exactly. If .xxx became the de facto "porn tld", to the point that porn buyers look for .xxx sites first, then yes - the porn operators would move to .xxx.
Not saying its likely, going to happen, any of that. Just responding to your point that .xxx wouldn't work because porn companies don't want it.
Re: your rant - was this necessary? Obviously you knew what I meant.
Seeing as how I run a service that happens to also be the largest parental content filtering service in the world (amongst other things), I can tell you that's simply not going to be an effective technique for parents. It'd be nice if it was, but it isn't.
Re: .xxx, I didn't mean it was perfect, or even an effective solution, just that it had some value and meaning compared to .co, which has none (IMO).
leather.xxx
While I hope it's use also aids in filtering (I'd love a checkbox in preferences to filter porn), I think there are many economic reasons a site would use .xxx . It says a lot about their site. It means shorter domain names.
If you had a website all about cars, wouldn't www.numberone.cars be a useful domain?