Twitter trials new polling feature

KACPER PEMPEL/REUTERS Selected Twitter users are experimenting with polls on the social network. Twitter’s new feature could prove helpful for the journalists, government agencies or brands seeking the opinion of their followers on a certain topic.

As of now though, the feature is reportedly visible only on the mobile apps and website, not on desktop applications like TweetDeck.

Twitter Inc., which has been adding new features under the leadership of interim Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey, unveiled a new tool that lets users create polls and track results. The polls appear as a simple question with two different options and an expiration time.

For this reason, we don’t know the extent of the polling feature’s availability. 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.

The complaints about polls so far focus on the lack of third-party integration and the rather more pressing concern that in timelines and embedded tweets (see above) polls only show up as a text question without the interactive element.

However, given that the feature is on trial, it is to be expected that these issues would be ironed out if given a full release.

This isn’t the first time that Twitter has tried adding polls to its communications service.