By keeping track of trending hashtags and scanning through tons of tweets, companies and organizations can use Twitter to gauge people’s interests and opinions, but doesn’t that seem like a really complex way to go about doing that? Twitter thinks so, which is why the company has started rolling out a new feature to make things easier: user-generated polls. Why go through all that data mining and deduction when you can just ask people directly, right?
Twitter is about to get a whole lot more interesting with its new poll feature. The social network is rolling out native polls to all users, which will allow them to get the public’s opinion on anything. Users simply have to ask a question and provide two answers. For example, a user can ask, “What should I eat for lunch?” Then provide two simple answers, like “a salad or a hamburger.” Polls will only remain live for 24 hours and all other Twitter users can vote anonymously. Tweeters can create a poll if they see the poll icon shown above the compose box. The poll feature was first spotted in September by a few verified Twitter users who were randomly selected as beta testers. Polls will be rolling out to all users and different platforms in the next few days. By the end of next week the feature should be available to everyone on iOS, Android, desktop and Twitter.com.
