ASKfm (Ask.fm until 14 January 2016) is a Latvian question and answer network launched in June 2010 as a competitor to Formspring. After registration, the user fills out their profile and can ask questions (anonymously or openly), reply on their profile, create photo polls. Also from 2021, app users can communicate anonymously or openly in public chats or tête-à-tête in private chats. The platform had 300 million registered users as of November 2021.
The site was founded in 2010 in Riga, Latvia. Its headquarters was moved to Dublin, Ireland following its 2014 acquisition by IAC (who also own Ask.com). In 2016, IAC sold it to Noosphere Ventures, a California-based asset management firm.
History
The site was founded in Latvia by brothers Ilja (Iļja) and Mark Terebin (Marks Terebins), Oskars Liepiņš, Valērijs Višņakovs and Klāvs Sinka, and launched on 16 June 2010, as a rival to Formspring.
By 2013, ASKfm reached 65 million registered users and continued its growth by approx. 300,000 new users per-day.
By February 2015, the number of registered users had grown to 80 million. Over 30 million questions and answers are created every day.
In 2016 IAC sold it to Noosphere, a California-based asset management firm which also owns several online gambling services, and a cybersecurity provider.
The same year, ASKfm did a major rebranding, changed the logo, and made several interface improvements. Also, now users can change the color of the interface and add a background picture.
In 2017, ASKfm reached 215 million registered users and remained the largest Q&A network in the world.
In 2017, it introduced three new features – Photo Polls, Shoutouts, and Discover. Photo polls allow voting for one of two photos in the post. A shoutout is a question asked to random ASKfm users in one location. Discover is a separate feed for the most interesting answers in the country (closed in 2021).
In 2018, ASKfm created its in-app currency – coins and a separate Versus feed for photo polls. Also in 2019, users got the opportunity to buy coins within the application.
In 2019, the team released Leaderboards, the feature showing the most active users on the platform and Tipping, that allows rewarding users' answers with coins.
In May 2019, it became known about the launch of the goods market, a store where users can purchase discounts and coupons for ASKfm coins. Also, it became known that the number of registered users on the platform reached 300 million.
In 2019, the app launched a VIP program to reward the most active users. Members of the VIP program have access to exclusive features of the app: creating secret answers, a personal progress bar that shows weekly statistics in the app. In 2021, private chats were added to these functions.
In 2020 the VIP program has already been joined by 147,500 askers from more than 50 countries. A special motivation system in the app let the VIP askers earn over 378 million coins, while the algorithms that promoted VIP-profiles got the users 2.4 million followers and 890,5 million likes. Besides, askers in Russia, Germany, and Italy got a chance to convert the coins they earned into real money. In the first year alone they managed to earn more than 4000 dollars by answering questions just like they did before.
Since 2020, registration is required to view profiles.
In 2020, at the peak of the pandemic COVID-19, 1 million users in Latin America returned to ASKfm. In March 2020, Twitter in Mexico was overflowing with tweets from people who remembered the social network of their childhood and started massively installing ASKfm. In just a day, the application reached 1st place in the App Store in less than 24 hours and 2nd place in Google Play in 36 hours in Mexico. During this period, ASKfm received more than 210,000 requests to restore old profiles, so the support service worked 24 hours a day.
In 2020, an ASKfm subscription was launched for the IOS app (and in 2021 for Android users). The subscription package includes a VIP badge, bonus coins, a secret answer feature, and the ability to use the app without ads.
In May 2021, private chats appeared in ASKfm, where users can chat tête-à-tête. The author of a private chat can remain anonymous during the entire dialogue or write to the chat openly at any time.