B2B social network LinkedIn launches polls market research tool
LinkedIn launches LinkedIn Polls in both paid and free versions for the professional market
Popular professional social network
LinkedIn has launched a new product to ?leverage the wisdom of crowds.?
LinkedIn Polls is available in both a paid and free version, and will allow professional networkers to conduct market research on both the peers within their own network and a wider LinkedIn audience.
LinkedIn?s Elizabeth Reaves explains, ?The idea of allowing you to quickly and cost effectively gather input and insight from the right group of people, is what is behind the new targeted LinkedIn Polls that we?re launching. Built on our inApps platform, LinkedIn polls allows you to create a poll, target it to a specific professional audience, and then analyze the results of your poll.?
Those using the poll service will have the ability to drill down the results be demographic, company size, job title, job function, age and gender. Newly created polls can then be sent to one of two groups: targeted group of professionals or within the creators own network. To send to a targeted group, LinkedIn are charging from $50 USD, whilst sending to your own group is free.
Whilst it is not clear whether the data can be exported, Reaves hopes that
LinkedIn Polls will empower professionals to, ?get the insights you need, from the right people, faster.? From their profile, LinkedIn users are able to see a list of current open polls as well as a list of polls they have participated in previously.
The addition of LinkedIn Polls follows the October 2008 launch of its
application platform, that it hopes will its
30 million strong professional community to more effectively
?communicate, collaborate and share information.? For launch, there were ten
applications
from companies such as Amazon, Google, Six Apart, SlideShare and
WordPress. LinkedIn also developed their own application called
Company Buzz which allows LinkedIn users to track what people are
saying on blogs, Twitter and other websites.
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