We're back online at http://candid.io . Someone on twitter posted "VCs should think twice before investing in startups without a .com" -> I think that's patently absurd. Azure, AWS, and the other 'core infrastructure' services suffer similar outages form time to time.
I hate genericized ccTLDs, but I don't think the VCs are the ones who should be avoiding them. People creating services should stick to .com, get the .net, and if they have to do something like "getdropbox.com" until they can buy dropbox.com, so be it. Going from dropbox.io to dropbox.com is ok, but I'd probably go for getdropbox.com in preference to dropbox.io.
Well as a person hosting a service under a .io domain I must say that it's next to impossible to find a decent domain under .com these days. They are all taken by domain sharks hoarding away and running link-farms. The .io landscape is a refreshing one, it's well recognized by it's typical audience (tech people), expensive enough so that it's not attractive for the domain-sharks, and there's plenty available.
Why exactly do you hate them?