Richard MacManus of Read/WriteWeb writes that PollDaddy has launched into public beta. I’ve seen so many of these apps that I’ve largely ignored them. I figured if and when I had a need for a poll, I’d go check them all out. PollDaddy looked simple enough to get started though that I finally tried creating a poll to see how it works.
I decided to create a poll on a topic I’m quite passionate about and have blogged about in the past – full vs partial text RSS feeds. Here is the poll displayed as a widget via JavaScript (a link appears if the JavaScript is disabled):
Overall, PollDaddy is quite slick and the admin tools for managing your polls are well done and easy to use. I was quickly able to create a poll, add it to my site, and then view the results. They also allow for custom styling, but I opted for one of the basic defaults.
I’m still not overly convinced about the long term viability of companies where polls are their only business. I know many have taken the angle of marketing to MySpace with widgets and “codes”, but I doubt this will be enough to generate significant revenues for a whole business around polls. The creator of PollDaddy, InFacta, appears to be using the service as marketing loss leader for their other products that include GroupSurveys, GroupMail, and GroupMetrics. I like the concept of a free service being used to enhance brand and company credibility as well as the more indirect driving of traffic and sales to the other products.
Pete Cashmore’s Mashable also has a detailed review of the PollDaddy launch with some interesting insight on how the widget won’t work well with most social networks due to the JavaScript. He also mentions other competing polls such as Quimble, Vizu, dPolls, and PollPub.
Are there any other poll services I should be trying?
