Why is .xyz so popular

I was surprised to read:

The 1,500,000th registration of a domain name under one of the new gTLDs happened in the last few days, probably last Friday, although exactly when is hard to pinpoint on newTLDstats.com daily update.

Currently total new gTLD registrations are showing at 1,517,747 with around one in five (301,627 – 19.87%) of these being .xyz registrations. Just on registrations, the second most successful new gTLD has been .berlin, which now has 136,943 domains under management, or 9.02 percent of all new gTLDs.

Can this be true? .xyz is the most popular new TLD?

Both of these new gTLDs have had differing promotions that have been extremely successful at getting them initial registrations. Network Solutions has run a promotion for .xyz where their .com registrants received the equivalent .xyz domain for free, resulting in Network Solutions being responsible for 232,685 of the gTLD’s DUM, or over three-quarters (77.14%) of the total.

Oh, now that makes sense. When you give them away for free, that is not what I call success.

The .berlin gTLD ran a successful promotion itself with a limited number of registrars where the maximum fee charged per domains was €5.55, with some even giving away domains. After three days of the promotion, DUM had jumped almost 90,000.

Again, if you give them away, that doesn’t indicate how successful you will be long-term.

According to the latest nTLDstats.com statistics, the third most popular of the new gTLDs is .club with 83,003 DUM, followed by .guru (65,137) and then .photography (40,603).

I can see why .club could do well.