Internet Broadcasting, a local media network for broadcast publishers, announced today the official launch of Slantly, an online opinion tool. Slantly is intended for web publishers to integrate into their site to create discussions and spark debate. Several major web publishers have already partnered with Slantly to use the tool, including Meredith Publishing and NYCtv.
Slantly offers several key features to online publishers. With their customizable polls, publishers are able to create polls on news and issues to engage their readers. Through these polls, users can vote and add comments to a forum attached to each poll, after they vote. These polls and discussions, while hosted on each publisher’s site, are all available on the Slantly site. A very useful feature to publishers is the ability to track the demographics of your voters and commenters. All of this is available on the Publisher Dashboard, where you can create, moderate, and manage your discussions, track activity, and customize the look and functionality of your discussions to match your site. Slantly also offers an open API, enabling publishers to customize the tool to suit their needs. I’ve included a widget from Slantly that rotates through several popular opinions.
There are several competing online opinion sites, in the form of polling sites like Polldaddy, Survey Monkey, dPolls, SodaHead (recently received new funding, covered here), and Vizu. Slantly does offer a similar service, but a bit differently. After playing around with the site a bit, they focus more on the opinions, not the polls. Given the nature of the associated sites (local news outlets), the audience is a bit older, and presumably a bit more opinionated and educated. This allows for more consistent users, as opposed to SodaHead, for example, which is marketed mainly for MySpace pages.
Internet Broadcasting, a company established in 1996, has been leading the market in local media online solutions. Originally, a web development company for major TV stations, IB saw the potential in the local media market. They have developed a system to optimize the way TV stations converge with the web to enable viewers to access and interact with the local news. Their network currently reaches 16 million unique visitors per month nationwide. Some of their clients include Hearst-Argyle Television Inc., Mcgraw-Hill Broadcasting, NBC, Meredith Broadcasting Group, Cox Television, and CNN.
IB is hoping that Slantly will bring their network a better user experience by enabling users to interact with their local news station and media outlets. Their intention by offering Slantly to any web publisher, in addition to their partners, is to engage readers in active discussion in order to provide meaningful interaction on their sites.
Looks cool….
Will probably try it out on TechPluto.com
Why should a publisher use a service that pushes his readers away?
Online sentiment/opinion data-mining & predictive analytic web application tools out there are getting crowed and the new boy on the block Peer39 will no doubt move into this market (apart from their business model in online ads), since the same algorithms apply.
It is a nice clean widget and the site is very intuitive. I like it. Good work guys.
However it does seem very aggressive at sending readers through to the Slantly site. I strongly doubt if any publisher is going to be keen on that. That’s an easy fix though.
Nice and simple, I like that.
It’s possible to compare opinions with other users but only those who’ve made comments to a poll. I can’t find another way to find their user name to click on. It would be nice to see a list of all voters even if they haven’t commented. Or have I missed something?
It would also be nice to have the feature “find users with similar opinions” and see other users profiles with a link to their blog etc.
@5 DevCase
You haven’t missed something
We’re working on new ways for users to compare their opinions with others. It’s an aspect that we’re really interested in exploring and developing further. All I can say at this point is…stay tuned.
Thanks for the comments!
Love it. Great non aggressive way to get more people thinking. Fun and playful. Why is it only US? Are the Americans not interested in other people’s opinions? Or is this only because it’s a beta version? Let’s have it as a poll…
@7 tajjoo
We had to start somewhere, so we started with the US. We plan to extend coverage to the rest of the World soon.
Interesting….totally confusing but not sure why publishers would use it. Drives traffic away, can’t connect with other users, limited…hope it improves…considerably.
congrats to Mike Potter and his team – nice work…
Minnesota tech rocks!
and I know we haven’t heard the last
cheers,
Graeme
One company you always miss when talking about this sort of thing is http://www.Livra.com around since 2000 by far the leader in South America and recently acquired by IPSOS http://www.ipso...porateNews.aspx
I think this site is great in it’s own right. It’s a little bit like Digg for opinions, rather than news. Opinions and reactions to events are more interesting than the bare facts. I wish them luck!
Online opinions are worthless.
Totally disagree that online opinions are worthless — look at the (even basic) online polls that went into the Obama campaign. The kind of opinion data we got even from just online sources was pretty incredible.
Very cool idea. Love the fact that the widget is super-simple — makes it a no-brainer for site visitors to engage in it. Rock on!
please i will like to get a complementry copy of online broadcasting to help my educational programme.
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We had to start somewhere, so we started with the US. We plan to extend coverage to the rest of the World soon.