Twitter is working to allow users add quick polls to their tweets. On Thursday, one of company spokesperson confirmed to VentureBeat that the company is experimenting with a new way to poll users on Twitter.
In testing phase for now
For now, it seems the polls are visible only on Twitter mobile app and website, and not on the desktop applications like TweetDeck. It is not known for now whether the company will roll-out this capability to all its 316 million monthly active users. It is possible that the capability gets shelved in sometime as it is still in an experimental stage, but now, since it has been confirmed, there are good chances of it moving towards a wider roll-out.
Twitter gave no further information on the topic, but a quick query on the site showed that the accessibility to embed these polls was with Twitter employees and certain verified profiles including those in media and sports, says VentureBeat. It’s been observed that all polls have a 24-hour time limit.
On Thursday, several accounts posted tweets displaying a simple poll structure, which is in the card form, and the user is presented with two options to choose from. The vote button is placed right below the poll options and alongside two tickers the vote button. One ticker is for the number of votes cast and the other is for the time left in casting a vote.
Similar attempts earlier from Twitter
Twitter has tried adding polls to its communications services in the past as well. Earlier, the companies were allowed to poll their followers via custom card polls. Twitter’s new feature could prove helpful for the journalists, government agencies or brands seeking the opinion of their followers on a certain topic. In case the micro-blogging firm decides to roll out the feature to all Twitter users then it is bound to result in a ‘poll mania’ since everyone will post a poll making it irritating for some of the users.
Meanwhile, Twitter is also working on redesigning its “Follow” and “Tweet” buttons, which will be rolled next month. “The new display removes the count and counturl display parameters, and will render in the same pixel dimensions as a Tweet button configured without a share count today,” the micro-blogging firm said.
In pre-market trading today, Twitter shares were up 0.75% at $26.80. Year to date, the stock is down almost 26% while in the last one-year, they are down almost 50%.
