Comments on: Poll Everywhere Asks The Crowd To Spice Up PowerPoint Presentations

By: Top Web Tools of 2008 - Number 8 « Barry Dahl dot com

Top Web Tools of 2008 - Number 8 « Barry Dahl dot com — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:03:02 +0000

[...] Not everyone loves it (read the comments at TechCrunch) [...]

By: Jeff from Poll Everywhere

Jeff from Poll Everywhere — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 01:14:37 +0000

Anil – You said, “That just isn’t true.” What part of what I wrote isn’t true? That you can trace our features and content back via our blog for the past year? That you only launched in July? What are you even talking about? And as for the originality of mobile-phone based ARS at a fraction of the cost of hardware ARS – we were definitely the first. Even the hardware ARS companies agree on that.

By: cheezespread

cheezespread — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:29:34 +0000

What about your pricing is streets ahead? Who says “streets ahead” anyways? @Charles Barkley, that’s a little rough, but the .net domain shit is funny.

The SMS site is definitely slow for me, too.

By: Dustin Kerwood

Dustin Kerwood — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:22:44 +0000

As a UI designer, I think SMSPoll’s site does look better. But If table-based layout and wickedly invalid HTML makes for good UI, then I guess SMSPoll qualifies as “far superior”.

And what’s up with the “streets ahead” pricing claim? For a big audience, SMSPoll comes out to $167 per 1000 voters – but Poll Everywhere seems to be $37 per 1000 voters. I guess the other plans are cheaper per voter, but that’s what you pay for half the functionality (no reports, PowerPoint download, keywords) and it only works in Australia and the UK.

By: Charles Barkley

Charles Barkley — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 21:55:05 +0000

OK, I’m Charles Barkley and I’m going to settle this dispute after I finish my cheeseburger. Alright I just looked at both the sites and started loading them at the same time. SMS took forever, but we’ll call it even I guess – it really just gave me time to finish eating.

SMS, what’s your actual domain – it’s not the .net correct? .Net’s are for get rich quick schemes, selling used car batteries and penis pills. Christ.

Turrible!

By: Joe Gibbons

Joe Gibbons — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 21:35:48 +0000

I like your roll-over buttons! Did you make those on Dreamweaver or Frontpage?

By: Anil

Anil — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 06:09:54 +0000

Hi Jeff,

That just isn’t true. Our UI is far superior to yours and the pricing is streets ahead. Whilst ours was hardly a new idea, I don’t believe you can say yours was either!

By: Jeff from Poll Everywhere

Jeff from Poll Everywhere — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:01:25 +0000

Hi Paul -

We’re aware of SMSPoll and have spoken to the AU-based founders. Without pointing fingers, let’s just say that you can trace back the original development of our features for about a year by looking back through our blog. SMSPoll launched July 1 according to their blog. Our plans and pricing, comparisons to traditional ARS systems, and other web content have been quite constant since far before July 1.

By: Joe Gibbons

Joe Gibbons — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:58:25 +0000

It looks like SMSPoll copied most of their features from Poll Everywhere. If you read their website close enough, they even lifted quite a bit of their marketing material!

By: Paul Gibler

Paul Gibler — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:33:34 +0000

Another tool that is out there is SMSpoll.net (http://www.smspollnet). It appears to have many of the same features as Poll Everywhere. For more on the convergence of technology and presentations see my blog PPT – Powerful Presentation Techniques (http;//www.connectingdots.typepad.com/ppt).

By: PPT - Powerful Presentation Techniques

PPT - Powerful Presentation Techniques — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:31:30 +0000

Audience Interaction with Text Messaging…

Many of us have heard of or experimented with audience response systems (ARS) or as a commenter on Techcrunch called them “classroom clickers”, to generate interactivity in a presentation. (see my Audience Response System posting from 2006 for more …

By: links for 2008-08-21 | The Zone Read

links for 2008-08-21 | The Zone Read — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:31:39 +0000

[...] Poll Everywhere Asks The Crowd To Spice Up PowerPoint Presentations Using mobile phones to poll an audience. I love this idea. (tags: idea mobile) [...]

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 02:22:11 +0000

I’ve had a few courses in which the professors polled the class using proprietary clickers. The technique was certainly an improvement over the typical PowerPoint presentation, and I think Poll Everywhere is taking a step in the right direction by making it much easier to implement. Probably less expensive, too, because it seems like most people (definitely college students) have unlimited text plans.

By: Live Audience Polling by Poll Everywhere

Live Audience Polling by Poll Everywhere — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 01:44:41 +0000

[...] Via TechCrunch. [...]

By: gojk

gojk — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:06:35 +0000

How many think the logo looks like they’re giving the middle finger?

By: Jeff from Poll Everywhere

Jeff from Poll Everywhere — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:03:32 +0000

We were surprised nobody had done this too. The existing players 1) didn’t have PowerPoint widgets, and 2) it was always “call for special pricing” where they size you up on the phone and it inevitably comes out to several thousand dollars.

Barriers to entry is a topic we’ve thought about a lot. We’ve already had a few close imitators. Without saying too much, I think we’re looking to go fast, and try to lead in innovation and customer service.

By: Jeff from Poll Everywhere

Jeff from Poll Everywhere — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:55:09 +0000

Nice service, Jerome! We hate that participants could be charged up to $.20 per vote. In the US, our carriers don’t universally support FTEU (Free To End User) text messaging unfortunately, so we can’t even bear the messaging fees if we wanted to. Our solution so far has been to make the interface available at poll4.com as well, so at least it’s free to people with a data plan.

The one advantage I can see to Poll Everywhere compared to MobiVote’s creative solution is that the attendee’s phone number is still private when they text a Poll Everywhere poll.

By: Greg

Greg — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:16:04 +0000

I’m surprised they are the dominant player, having just started.
No one did this before?

Well, at least you can always present this startup really well

QUESTION THOUGH — what are the barriers to entry? What’s to prevent me from making the same service in 2 weeks?

By: Jerome

Jerome — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:01:02 +0000

See http://www.mobivote.com

By: Jerome

Jerome — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:00:27 +0000

Implementation is very nicely done and intuitive.

Problem with SMS’s polls are that they cost money to people participating the poll.

MobiVote has chosen another path, free for the users : they give their cell phone number, and then the MobiVote server calls then. It is much faster and reliable than SMS receiving… and 100% free for the participants…

By: Damon Damony

Damon Damony — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:52:18 +0000

Text “these guys are already profitable, mongoloid” to 41441

By: NoHowever

NoHowever — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:59:55 +0000

lol

By: Jane Rowe

Jane Rowe — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:45:52 +0000

Another way we use to engage people in PowerPoint Presentations is Papershow: annotation and real time interaction. See http://tinyurl.com/5txtvo

By: addnr

addnr — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:56:29 +0000

you guys from polleverywhere could use our vote method. so it would be free for poll participants! just let it ring once at a specific number and you have got the results real time too.

By: jbomb

jbomb — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:28:15 +0000

I think this is fantastic tool. We have already used this at Deloitte Consulting and our clients and practitioners have been very receptive.

It by no means is limited to a boring powerpoint format. It is useful anytime you want to gather survey information. I used it to get real time feedback on a survey rather than tallying up the results from hard copies. Poll Everywhere has a great reporting tools for that too.

It really couldn’t be easier to use. Those stupid hardware things always break. I think this helps us in Corporate America where presentations, surveys, and feedback are a necessary evil.