Ask.com has made a lot of changes over the past several months. Last year, the company made the decision to pull out of the search industry. According to Lisa Kavanaugh, the Chief Product and Technology Officer, Ask found that users wanted questions and answers from the service.

As a result, the company launched a site focused  on answering questions in June of last year. The new product allowed it to combine both published answers on the Web with answers that people were thinking. Kavanaugh said Ask is the only player in the space that is making this information accessible.

In November of 2010, Ask took the service mobile. Interestingly, users were incorporating “chat” into the service. In order to accommodate this need, Ask just launched a location-based chat app at SXSW. The app, which is called Ask Around, allows users to see what’s happening in real time in various locations.

“We’re looking to see how people use it… we’re looking at it as an experiment,” said Kavanaugh.

At this point, she said that location fits with Ask’s Q&A service and the company would see how users react with it before it moves forward with other location efforts.