Pollsb (short for Polls Boutique) has raised a Series A round of $1.3 million led by DFJ Tamir Fishman Ventures and early-stage investors Zelkova Ventures and PhilQuo Ventures. The Tel-Aviv, Israel-based startup had previously raised $700,000 from incubator and seed funding provider Connector Media, which brings the total invested in the company to $2 million.
Here’s how they pitch the service:
Pollsb is your ticket for a self-discovery ride. Our ride will allow you to learn new things about yourself, and about the way others perceive you. It’ll help you get instant feedback, and ultimately assist you in developing what we call social identity. It’ll even introduce you to some pretty cool people and help you find some pretty cool stuff people like you seem to enjoy.
The Pollsb ride is fueled by questions, on every topic in the world. Joining you on it are all the other active participants on Pollsb. The insights we provide you stem from where you stand in relation to them.
If that sounds a little vague, it’s because it is.
But I signed up for the service and discovered it is in fact a – gasp – polling application platform (slash social network), and quite frankly not the best one I’ve ever come across. Pollsb lets you create polls and mini-surveys based on text, photo, video and/or audio, assign a category to it, tag it and turn it into a widget (see example below). The poll can be shared with the Pollsb community and by e-mail, but the process also involves the creation of embed code with direct integration to WordPress, Blogger and TypePad blogs.
The user experience is really below par in my opinion, and the widgets are fairly limited (only 5 answers per poll, for example). Pollsb also seems a little thin on the business model front; I doubt placing default Google AdSense advertising units will prove to be enough to give their new investors a return any time soon. They also invite advertisers to buy into their “innovative, tailor-made solutions to engage their precise target audience, tapping into their needs, preferences and opinions” but it’s not clear how they go about this.
As I was writing this, I got an e-mail from someone at Pollsb who saw the poll I created for testing purposes telling me that the polling part of the service is only the “fuel that facilitates what they’re trying to do”, which is help users and companies learn new things about themselves, get quick self-feedback, and brainstorm with others. Fair enough, but good luck telling the rest of the world that you’re not a polling application.
“Nice” little footer link they had attached to that poll… Hmpf.
If the VCs lose all of their money in this venture, they deserve their fate.
Someone explain to me how this is ever going to make money when there are gazillions of free polling scripts and widgets online, on blogger, on wordpress, etc???
Anjali Sen
What makes a great service is the content and people who use it and not the features that can easily be copied.
I think Pollsb is better than many others.
True Vagabond.
I personally really like pollsb.
saying that pollsb is just “*gasp* polling appliaction platform” is like looking at RSS for the first time and saying its just a news delivery platform.
That’s a very shallow look on a great community and a brand new language they built around polls.
You’re right. I forgot that their polls actually make me learn new things about myself, and about the way others perceive me. It’ll also help me to get instant feedback, and ultimately assist me in developing social identity. It’ll even introduce me to some pretty cool people and help me find some pretty cool stuff people like I seem to enjoy.
pollsb is such a fun place to hang, much more than all the boring web2 apps ppl launch every morning.
the content is interesting and the community is actually intelligent and alive.
obviously, you’ve never visited the site.
and obviously, you’re angry about something.
And obviously, you’re very biased.
rofl
huh??? How about looking inward to see who you are instead of opinion on others perceive you? Sad, sad, sad.
Give me $10 (or worse) and I’ll say you are prefect just the way you are…. until you leave.
How ugly and uninspiring their widgets might be… these ackward venture fundings makes me actually smile… There’s a bright future for my start up after all…
I at least like the allusion to the Beasty Boy’s album “Pauls Boutique” – a classic hip-hop album of the late 80’s.
Strange. In my opninion PollsB is the best, most fun polling site I’ve used. The design is fantastic and there’s something about it that is utterly addictive.
Cut the aftroturfing or most of us will stay away on principle alone. I’ve never felt the need to rave about a new service I like. In fact, since no new service can be complete and “utterly addictive” out of the gate, I’d usually say what I don’t like (i.e. feedback).
I agree with coldbrew. I usually check out all startups featured on techcrunch but when i see fake comments like the one that shade left, I dont visit/use just by principle.
Trust us on this – you are actually LOSING ppl with fake comments like this.
Thanks for covering us, Robin.
We respect your opinions, and thank you for your honesty.
Pollsb.com is a social site that uses polls as interaction fuel between people. In that aspect, you can probably compare us to Sodahead. But you didn’t. You chose to compare us with poll widget providers. Poll widgets were never our focus, and we feel your post, and especially the headline you chose, describing pollsb as a polling widget service, are unfair, and more importantly, untrue.
Pollsb, it’s in the name.
bsocial would have made more sense
I agree. If you don’t want to be associated with polling widgets then you probably shouldn’t have “polls” in your company name.
Can someone give me a darn good reason why clones are getting so much money in funding?
I seriously don’t get it. Are the VCs dumb or are these startups just totally awesome…
It’s like everyday kazillions of startups are sprouting…but which are the ones that really have the business model, the right look, etc.
I doubt there’s many…
I actually used Pollsb quite a bit over the past year or so, but only to create neat little polls for my blog and not to research anything in particular. I do spend a lot of time there answering silly polls by other users.
To me it is a fun platform to work with, but not perfect in any sense.
Well…
I didn’t try creating a widget, but the site doesn’t look like it’s really focused around widget creation.
It does look more like SodaHead than anything else.
why dont u have Techcrunch Israel? everyday we see more startups from Israel covered here. Most of which are just alternatives to US based startups.
You answered your own question.
I (unfortunately) can’t read Hebrew.
The economy is crumbling, people are out of work, and yet some stupid VC’s actually think polling (or whatever they are pitching it as) is a business? Not to mention there is no technology here than a 13 year old Web hack can, and probably already has built.
sure, it’s fun to answer polls, sure people might do it… but a business??
As with all things, this site actually has a promising idea.. problem is it’s BURIED underneath a bunch of garbage, and bad judgement. The site as it is now? will NOT succeed. How can you leverage polling to make it succeed? I’ll let you figure that out for yourself.
Hint: it does not revolve around generic polling. Think of a SPECIFIC use that could garner mass appeal.
Well Henway, maybe you would be so kind as to share your insightful, million-dollar-funded company changing idea to the rest of us?
lol he has no idea. Anytime someone delivers a line as cliched as ‘I’ll let you figure it out for yourself’ followed by a ‘hint:…’, it usually means they have absolutely no clue.
And that they have their head really way up their ass.
You forgot to put modpoll.com in your poll.
Funny you post this. I stumbled them twice this week googling sex polls and photo polls. they come up unique because they let you do polls with images.
Yo Dawg, I see you like polls. So we put polls in your poll, so you can poll while you poll.
After spending half a day checking out different poll services I discovered JS-kit, which is just superb. It does everything in JavaScript so almost zero setup (eg you don’t need to create an account or login, for example), and it ‘just works’ without forcing you into a look&feel you don’t want.
We used it to do a quick customer survey at http://www.speedsell.com/poll recently and I was delighted with the result. I would take a lot of convincing to use an alternative.
Idea looks ok, how it got VC on the other hand baffles me.
…and what’s original about this BLOG? The content. Apps are easy to copy, it’s the ability to hang on to the community that does it bud, didn’t you know that?
Now that, sir, is a POINT!
ah! the sweet smell of recognition! thank you. PS the email address is a fake and so’s the name!