In their continuing quest for world domination, Social Media giant Twitter has recently launched a new poll feature. The feature will appear within the compose box and will allow users to gather opinions from their followers about any particular topic of their choice.
Twitter announced details of the feature last Wednesday (Oct 21st) on their blog stating:
“Previously, we’ve offered a few ways to participate in polls — Tweeting questions and tracking replies, tallying hashtag votes, or asking followers to favourite or retweet to vote. Now, you’ll be able to create your own two-choice poll right from the compose box.”
The new feature offers up a whole new scope for engagement and could prove an especially useful tool for businesses and marketers conducting research.
In the past, anyone who wanted to gather feedback would do so in the form of a tweet containing a question or a makeshift voting system along the lines of “RT (retweet) for yes or favourite for no.”
More often than not these kinds of tweets were generally overlooked by the public.
Now users can create their own unique two-button poll which will allow other users to submit their votes anonymously and unrestricted to any topic.
Results are calculated as a percentage and the poll will stay live on Twitter for 24 hours. All voters will also get a notification once the results are in.
The feature is slowly being rolled out at the moment so it is only available to a limited number of accounts at present.
The new feature must be seen by companies as a valuable new way of collecting data and general feedback about a product or service.
The main drawback to many however is the limitation of just two answering options on the poll.
The reason for this is unclear, it may be a deliberate approach by Twitter to keep things simple while the feature is still in its testing phase.
While the new feature has been well received by most some Twitter users have labelled it as unnecessary and a potential source of annoyance.
Keep an eye out for the poll icon, which looks like a pie chart when tweeting. We can’t wait to put it to the test here at Matrix Internet!
Interested in using Twitter for business? Here at Matrix Internet we provide a full in-house Social Media service for our clients . Contact us today to learn more.
By Jeff Sheridan
By Matrix Internet