Twitter, a part of the "big three" in social media platforms, has announced a new feature for it's users: user polls. Now, users can create their own polls for their followers to take and track results privately. This move is especially huge for companies because it offers another "free tool" for market researchers to gauge the market. Some view this move as a way of keeping up with Facebook and Google because it's platforms already include poll generation. Twitter, on the other hand, views this move as a way of attracting new users along with it's political donation collection software and button for buying concert tickets.
Personally, I see this as a copy-cat move in order for Twitter in order to compete with other social media platforms. This looks like a case of, "If you can offer user polls, so can I!" situation. User polls don't necessarily jump off the page as an innovative step in the ever-changing social media movement. I don't expect this new feature to create a lot of buzz, but it is a cool new feature users can use. In my Social Media course at Central Connecticut State University, we talked about ways companies can use feedback from social media to evaluate the market. This tool can finally allow companies to view feedback from a new sample of Twitter users.
Twitter unveiled this new feature on September 24th 2015 and is currently in operation for Twitter users. A supplemental article is offered below.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-24/twitter-adds-another-new-feature-user-generated-polls
