[LeafStorm]

I noticed http://northcarolina.history.museum/ in the listing. I clicked it, and it resolves to an IP that is no longer routable. http://asheville.art.museum/ suffered a similar fate, and http://ncmls.durham.museum/ immediately redirected to http://lifeandscience.org/.

I imagine a lot of these were purchased as "Hey! There's a .museum top-level domain! Let's buy it! ...You know, we should probably write this down somewhere."

[mistermumble]

This is similar to .travel top-level domain. Someone thought it was a good idea, just like .museum.

Since 2006, the travel.travel registry has sold 200,000 .travel domains. I am a heavy user of travel sites (Expedia, Hipmunk, hotel sites, etc). I have never, in the course of my online usage, ever run into a .travel site.

This is why gTLDs are likely to fail. At least for users and for purchasers of subdomains, not necessarily for the registrars.

EDIT: added Wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.travel

[markdown]

The national tourism bureau where I live recently switched to http://www.fiji.travel/

Strangely enough, they kept the www

[joe5150]

The VMFA in Richmond, on the other hand, has a perfectly functional .museum domain, http://vmfa.museum.