According to a story in the NewYorkTimes.com, Ask.com has acquired Ask.Fm.
The deal was announced last week by IAC/InterActiveCorp, the owners of Ask.com
Ask.Fm is not just a domain name, but a popular site 180 million regular monthly users .
Forty percent of Ask.fm’s users are younger than 18, according to Doug Leeds, chief executive of Ask.com.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Under the terms of the sale The co-founders, brothers Mark and Ilja Terebin, will immediately cash out and leave the company and will have no further influence on how it is run.
The company is based in Riga, Latvia. I know several people working for them, looks cool. I hope they do not move the headquarter away.
alexander.lv
Alexander
Anytime I hear Riga, you are the first thing that comes to mind
The ask.com toolbar aggressively self-loads and requires major effort to remove. That company can take a long walk on a short pier.
I expect Ask.com bought Ask.fm for one reason and one reason only…that is, to shut.it down. Clearly the author of this article is unfamiliar with the troubled history of the content and usage of Ask.fm…undoubtedly, the existence of Ask.fm was causing harm to the Ask.com brand.
As soon as I read it, I thought the same. The site was the focus of many articles geared toward parents and knowing what their children were up to. Many articles about bullying and other negative behavior going on and some articles advised parents to get their minor children off the website.
The fact the founders cashed out may mean they are going to at a minimum redo the site and put in provisions to protect against some of the negative aspects of the website.