Grabbed a few myself, perhaps more than I should have but at low/no premium renewals the bet is worthwhile. A single sale should pay for my 40 or so regs.
Some of my favorites: immersive, audition, videography, visions (singular is registry reserved), timelapse
Some animal/birds/fruit: cuckoo, wildcat, heron, melon, lovebird (many many of my lists were grabbed in presales, some in the first days of EAP)
Some keywords that would make nice apps: priorities, dues, transcriptions, bookkeepers
And a couple of two words like daytrip, speedread, fishbowl, layover.
I passed on a TON of awesome names at low premiums or last days EAP/no premium renewals, words like visual, decentralize, interactive, honeymoon because they felt too generic to work as brands. I almost regged Goals but the 900 renewal turned me off, and goal/planning is a crowded appspace. (If anyone feels like grabbing Plans.app, it’s still out there at 900 renewal)
Fun fact: Yesterday I scraped the top namebio sales for single keywords that have sold in .com over $25k and 90% are taken, 95%+ for those that are regular renewal.
Will this be a worthwhile bet? I don’t know, but I think this has the highest odds of working of all gTLDs I’ve seen. I think four years into the “flood” more people are aware of the new extensions than we think. I mentioned my .app regs to a few non-domain friends and most thought the extension existed already, which isn’t a bad sign.
I think while the keywordapp.com have been offered as the closest comps, I don’t believe it’s a fair comparison, and while developers have plenty of options if they don’t want to pay a premium (getkeyword.com, hellokeyword.com, wearekeyword.com, I’ve seen them all for apps and startups), .app will rank higher in preference.
The .mobi comparison is also futile, the extension was launched before the iPhone came out so it’s an entirely different era.
But alas, debating whether and why it will work or fail is futile, time will tell.