.IO is truly just a phenomenon that "just happened." It collectively rolled out and picked up momentum with each new domain registration. I remember a few years back when I started seeing a few here and there pop up. Right away as an old school Linux veteran I thought it was cute and "got" the idea. No one planned this, and even if they did it wasn't the master plan that created the popularity of .IO.
.IO has only commercialized within the web developer and b2b communities. I'm not saying that in a negative way, it is however a billion dollar industry at least. I really appreciate the post from a historical standpoint and hope in some way the popularity of .io will some way contribute to this territory.