Wayin Offers Polls 'Without Leaving Twitter'

US firm Wayin has launched a data collection tool based on Twitter, allowing users to poll their followers and receive tallied results in a specified time frame.

When founded last year, Wayin was described by the company's Chairman Scott McNealy, previously the co-founded of Sun Microsystems, as 'a little bit of Facebook, a little bit of Twitter and a big chunk of SurveyMonkey.' The company's widgets and apps already allow companies and individuals to upload their own polls and the new initiative allows Twitter users to generate an instant poll of their followers for free. This provides real-time feedback on ads, brands and live events such as sports and TV shows without the 'respondents' having to leave the Twitter environment.

The free service is a simple poll with an 'end of day' tally. There is also paid-for functionality for enterprises, including leader boards, games and customized charts and graphs.

Tom Jessiman, CEO of Wayin, said: 'The beauty of this service is its simplicity and alignment with current Twitter behavior. Most polling services require a user to click a link from Twitter which links to a new website. If you are on a mobile device, this can be a deal killer. By keeping the questions inside Twitter, users stay engaged without the headaches of navigating to multiple websites and applications.'

The company is online at www.wayin.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.