At the back end of last week, social networking giant Facebook introduced a new polling feature to all versions of the platform.
It is believed to have been working on the feature for the last couple of months and has now rolled it out on a worldwide basis.
To create a poll, the user needs to click on compose post, or ‘What’s on your mind?’ as if they were going to post any content to the site. Below the text box is an option to include a poll. The user would then click this, and type in their question as a new status. They are then able to type in two options as answers to present to their friends. There is no limit into how long the question can be, but answers are limited to a maximum of 25 characters.
Furthermore, answers do not have to just be plain text; users have the options of adding a photo or GIF. Alongside the text box for the answer is the photo icon. Users simply click this and they are asked whether they wish to add a GIF or upload a photo.
It is up to the user to decide how long their poll is available for their friends to respond. Facebook will allow users to set this for a day, a week, a custom option, or the chance to keep the poll open forever.
Facebook’s poll feature is supported by the web version of the site, as well as the iOS and Android mobile versions, and is available to use straight away. Polls can be posted by both people and pages.
The move follows that of Facebook-owned network Instagram, which also added a new polling feature last month. The photo-sharing platform added polling stickers to its Stories feature, allowing users to ask their followers a question and add a two-answer sticker to the post for followers to click on.
As well as these two, Twitter has a polling feature of its own, with users able to integrate them into tweets. It offers the ability to set up to four response options, as opposed to both Facebook and Instagram’s two.
Facebook has experimented with polling features in the past, with Facebook Questions being introduced back in 2010. However, this was shut down two years later in 2012. It would seem that it was just ahead of its time, as this year, Facebook has gone polling crazy, introducing polling features to the main Facebook platform, Instagram and Messenger.
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