Polls, Poll-Taking Wide Open On Twitter

Polls are coming to Twitter, the social giant announced on Wednesday.

“In the coming days, everyone will be able to create polls,” Todd Sherman, a Product Manager at Twitter said in a blog post.

That means marketers, professional posters, and regular folks can survey their followers on any subject from salsa preferences to the suitability of presidential candidates.  

To date, Twitter offered a few ways to participate in polls, including the option of simply tweeting questions and track replies.

Now, users of all stripes can create their own two-choice poll directly from the “compose box,” at which point it will stay live for 24 hours.

For poll takers, Twitter has decided not to share their activity or polling choices with their own network connections. 

The new tool comes as Twitter appears to be losing its grip as a top marketing platform. By 2017, in fact, Instagram is on track to overtake Twitter for the first time in terms of popularity among marketers, according to a new forecast from eMarketer.

The number of U.S. companies using Twitter for marketing purposes will continue to grow, but penetration will increase by just 1.4 percentage points between this year and 2017, eMarketer expects.

Twitter is also trying to focus its offerings and appeal to a broader audience.

In a letter to employees the other week, recently returned CEO Jack Dorsey said that his team was “working around the clock to produce streamlined road map for Twitter, Vine and Periscope.”

Dorsey added that Twitter’s core focus is on “experiences which will have the greatest impact.”

To that end, Twitter debuted a new Moments service, last week. Formerly named Project Lightning, Moments is squarely aimed at the millions of consumers who have yet to embrace Twitter in its current -- and what many call confusing -- form.

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