Almost a month ago, Twitter was testing user generated polls with some users, mostly with verified users. Well today, the company has announced that the feature will be rolled out to all users soon.
Coming soon! We're rolling out the ability for everyone to create polls on Twitter: https://t.co/pH5a8q9Ujz pic.twitter.com/ijAKEMUdf1
— Twitter (@twitter) October 21, 2015
Previously, individuals and brands were only able to track the sentiment of a certain question by creating specific hashtags where the participants tagged their answers to. These hashtags are later on tracked and the overall sentiment of the topic was determined. This was laborious to be honest and hence the need for an actual polling framework is more than welcome. Another method people used to create polls on Twitter is by asking people to retweet for a certain option and favourite for another.
In this new iteration, just as previously shown from the tests, you can be able to create a poll by looking for the poll icon in the compose box. The polls only feature two choices and will be live for 24 hours. If you vote in any poll, your vote won’t be shared publicly.
This feature will be used effectively by journalists and brands in their pursuit to seek the opinion of their audience about a certain topic of interest. Facebook also announced a polling feature but unlike Twitter’s iteration, it will be used by broadcasters to engage with their audience who post about what they are watching on TV.
Twitter promises to roll out the user generated polls on their mobile apps (iOS and Android) and for web (twitter.com) in the next few days.
