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Who ever thought a simple public opinion poll could be so addictive?

Published by Mike Kujawski on July 4, 2008

Every once in a while I come across a Web 2.0 application that really stands out from the crowd.  Usually the distinguishing factor ends up being SIMPLICITY.

Case in point: Ask500people.com a simple mash-up application that leverages the mighty Google Maps and the IP addresses of respondents (to determine geographic location).

The big idea: You ask a simple multiple choice question and then watch the world respond in real-time.

So what kind of questions have I asked so far? Well, they’re kind of all over the map, literally. Click on each to see the responses from all over the world.

  1. Do you believe in God? A.) Yes , B.)No,  C.) I believe in multiple Gods,  D.)Depends how you define God
  2. Would you ever join the military? A.) Yes B.) No
  3. Do you believe in life after death? A.) Yes  B.) No
  4. Do you suffer from chronic back pain? A.) Yes B.) No
  5. Are you familiar with the term Web 2.0? A.) Yes B.) No

Clearly the more controversial the question, the higher the response rate (well over 600 for the religious ones). I like using this tool to see how close a random sample of the world population is to commonly held beliefs and proven statistics. For example, it is estimated that back pain in Canada is responsible for about 30% of worker’s compensation claims. In my quick “chronic back pain ” poll, about 20% of the 70 respondents claimed to have chronic back pain…interesting. When I asked the military question, about 28% of the 450 respondents said they would potentially consider joining the military, the rest said no way. In Canada, it is statistically proven that at any given time only 12% of the population would consider joining the military. Clearly, the military plays a much stronger role in other areas of the world (especially when service is mandatory).

At the moment, ask500 allows you to zoom in on the map and see the specific responses in each city, however there is no feature that does this automatically. I would love to eventually see a breakdown by country and city in the official tabulation.

Try answering the poll below for fun. I’m curious to see how well the “embed” feature works.

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9 Comments

  1. Ryan

    Aloha, Mike! Thanks for checking out Ask500People.com. I’m glad you found the site as fun as addictive as I did (which is why I happily joined the team earlier this year).

    We do geolocate by IP, but now let users specify a more (or less) accurate location if they like. Also, you can see votes broken down by country in a simple table by clicking the ‘Votes’ tab below your question’s map. We definitely have plans for more detailed demographic reporting and setting up more country-specific features.

    Thanks also for using the blog embed code! We only recently updated it to work well with WordPress blogs, and it seems to be working fine here!

    Happy asking!

    # July 4, 2008
  2. Mike Kujawski

    Great ! Not sure how I missed that. The country breakdown is extremely useful. Thanks Ryan. Keep me posted on any new additions/features.

    MK

    # July 4, 2008
  6. Robin Browne

    Hi Mike – and Ryan,
    Ask500 is cool but what’s the value of asking a random sample of 500 people for an company or organization that has a well defined target audience? Is there a version coming where you can target specific demographics?

    # July 18, 2008
  7. Mike Kujawski

    Hey Robin, I would definitely advise against using Ask500 as part of any form of statistically significant marketing research. If anything, as I pointed out, it’s more of a proxy opinion tool that is solely useful for geographic based segmentation insight (note that they now have region-specific breakdowns). The reason it’s so popular is its ease and anonymity. The second you start asking people to fill out psychographic profiles (to allow cross-tabulation) your instant-response rate will go down. That being said, if somebody figured out an easy and addictive way to do this, I would be all over it.

    # July 18, 2008
  8. Joe Girl

    Tag! You’re it!

    Hey Mike! Guess you never found your camera… rats.

    Love this site – keep up the incredible work!!!

    Hoping to spread the word even further, so I’ve tagged you in a little game of Blog Tag. check it out at http://www.joegirl.com (July 20 post.)

    Joe

    # July 21, 2008
  9. Bookmarks about Poll

    […] – bookmarked by 3 members originally found by khchannel on 2008-08-27 Who ever thought a simple public opinion poll could be so addictive? […]

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