I've been around for a lot of these releases and as excited as I get about potential projects it's hard to justify using anything but .com.
The internet is all about .com in the U.S. and .co.uk in the UK, or .au in Australia for example... .free just doesn't compare to how popular these are.
I pre-registered in the .me craze with race.me but that domain got cherry picked by an industry insider and I lost faith in the process too.