Ask.FM is a personal Q&A website and app that has some similarities to Jelly but is mostly used by teenagers. The company has been the subject of quite a bit of controversy around safety concerns but it doesn’t look like that has put a dent in the incredible user growth that Ask.FM is seeing.
What I find interesting about this company outside of their insanely amazing user growth numbers is that fact that they picked Ask.fm when Ask.com runs something that could be considered a confusingly similar service. Of course Ask.com is not for sale so they had to decide whether to call themselves something else, or stick with Ask and get it in a different TLD.
They stuck with Ask, went with a .FM and it’s pretty darn clear that not having their .COM and even having a similar site on the .COM isn’t hurting them at all. We saw the same results with Vine (Vine.co), About.me, and Jelly (Jelly.co).
While I think .COM prices are going nowhere but up I do think that startups have clearly proven that you don’t need the .COM to be successful, even in the case that the .COM is taken by someone doing something very similar…there’s no doubt about it, the online branding world is changing, the question is, are you?
