PollDaddy Expands Widget Suite, Upgrades System
Mark Hendrickson
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The hype around widgetizing the web may have died down a bit, but PollDaddy - a company obviously focused on polls - will be pushing that widgetizing process further along with its version 2.0 release today.
PollDaddy 2.0 will mark the company’s foray into providing a fuller suite of data-collecting widgets. Starting today, PollDaddy will distribute a new online survey tool and, within a month, the company will provide a more generic form generator that will be capable of making things like contact forms. Around the same time, PollDaddy will release a quiz generator as well. All of these new embeddable tools will build upon the success of the company’s ubiquitous poll widget, which has attracted 70,000 users and is viewed across the web 70 million times per month. The most active poll ever deployed was for R.Kelly’s MySpace page; it garnered 1.2 million responses.
As part of this second version, PollDaddy will also provide better reporting, tracking, fraud detection, and voter location features. While the current services will remain free, some of these new features will cost a premium of $20/month. PollDaddy is also revamping its code base, moving over to Amazon S3 to handle increased traffic, and looking to provide Open Social integration by mid-December.
Aside from adding new functionality, co-founder David Lenehan says that PollDaddy will increasingly focus on building widgets that integrate seamlessly into websites and don’t actually look like widgets. This integration, he says, will signify “a real coming of age for widgets.”
PollDaddy is a two-man, self-funded operation based in Ireland that has been providing widgets for about a year now. The company looks to close its first round of financing in the next six months.
