If you google About me you will see a good example of EDM first result is www.about.me. Might answer your question.
Exact match domains will rank well. If you're competing with the established .com, don't expect to out rank it but focus on your site and yes, emd's in other extension will rank. Try to stick with ccTLD incl .me, .co, .tv but not getting too obscure ie.. .cc, .vc, .ws
EMD's are losing their benefit gradually. They are still beneficial for the time being but not as much as they were before, and if I'm reading between the lines correctly google plans to implement other changes that will limit the benefit of EMD's further. Although it might help you a bit now to have an EMD, I'd focus on the other factors more for a long term project: Good Content, Good Backlinks. Also if the EMD's for your keyword are all taken for primary extensions (org, net, com) then most likely you're going into an over saturated niche anyways and might want to consider going in a different direction.