The reason (noun).com domains are desirable is for SEO purposes. A few years ago, it was really easy to rank highly in Google for whatever keywords where in your domain name. For example, if you wanted to rank for [digital cameras] your best bet was to buy digitalcameras.com or some variation of that name.
As SEO has gotten more and more complex, exact match domains (EMDs) don't work quite as well anymore but are still a pretty big ranking signal [1].
For somebody worrying about long term brand appeal, an EMD might not make sense but for somebody launching a new ecommerce store or doing affiliate marketing EMDs are still a great asset to have.