polls
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Epic Games Store will randomly ask users to rate games to prevent review bombing
Epic is trying to improve cross-play for all platforms too.
Snapchat adds bitmoji reactions and threaded replies to chats
Other new features include emoji-driven polls in stories and snaps.
Reddit's new 'predictions' feature turns polls into a game
Reddit has launched a new feature called Predictions, which can make polls more fun by giving you tokens to bet with.
Spotify brings polls and Q&A to all Anchor-hosted podcasts
You will soon see more polls and Q&A prompts on podcasts created with Spotify's Anchor production suite.
Instagram users can now join group chats in Messenger
After introducing cross-messaging between Messenger and Instagram last year, Facebook has made it more useful with the addition of cross-app group chats.
Facebook is opening its experimental predictions app to all users
For better or worse, Facebook's Forecast will crowdsource users' predictions about important issues like the 2020 election and COVID-19.
Spotify is testing polls to make podcasts more interactive
Spotify will let podcasters survey their listeners with a new poll tool.
Reddit makes creating a poll as easy as creating a post
Today, Reddit is introducing its own polls tool. Polls are already pretty popular on Reddit, with about 15,000 new ones created each month. But until now, they have been hosted by third-party sites. With this update, Reddit is making polls a native post option for all communities (except text-only communities like r/AskReddit).
Researchers easily breached voting machines for the 2020 election
The voting machines that the US will use in the 2020 election are still vulnerable to hacks. A group of ethical hackers tested a bunch of those voting machines and election systems (most of which they bought on eBay). They were able to crack into every machine, The Washington Post reports. Their tests took place this summer at a Def Con cybersecurity conference, but the group visited Washington to share their findings yesterday.
Instagram's direct message polls give you private feedback
Instagram's polls are good for soliciting feedback (or just stroking your ego), but what if you'd rather not share the results with absolutely all of your followers? You now have that option. Poll stickers are now available for direct messages, making it easy to pick your friends' brains without broadcasting it as a Story. You can ask your closest pals for fashion tips without spoiling what you'll wear, for example.
Facebook's live gameshows could take a bite out of HQ Trivia
Instead of creating its own HQ Trivia competitor, Facebook has taken a broader approach and created an entire gaming platform. The company announced polls for Live and on demand videos as well as new gamification features for Live videos. Partners like Insider, BuzzFeed and Fresno can add polls, quizzes and challenges to both individual videos as well as entire game show series.
Polls are here for Facebook Messenger Stories
Facebook announced quite a few changes and additions to its Messenger app at its recent F8 event, including a planned redesign and a way to buy Nike sneakers and other products in AR. Now the company is bringing polls over to Messenger Stories, making it simple to share a status update and ask your buddies what they think about it.
Facebook borrows from Twitter this time with Polls feature
Polls check a lot of social media manager boxes like "engagement," "feedback" and "traffic lift." With all those buzzwords, it's truly a wonder that Facebook hadn't yet pilfered, I mean borrowed, the idea from poll-crazy rival Twitter. Expect to see them everywhere in your feeds from now on, however, as Facebook has launched Polls globally on iOS, Android and the web. Starting today, you'll be add surveys on any silly topic you like and add GIFs and photos to make them pop.
Earthquake science explains why election polls were so wrong
Polls are not predictors. This is the message that American University history professor Allan Lichtman has been screaming at the world since 1981: It's not that the polling system itself is broken -- instead, polls behave exactly as they're designed. The problem is they aren't designed to predict the outcome of elections. "Polls are snapshots," Lichtman says. "They are not predictors. They are abused and misused as predictors because they're so easy. If you're a journalist, you don't even have to get out of bed in the morning to write a story about the polls and tell where the so-called 'horse race' stands." Lichtman has accurately predicted the winner of the nine US presidential elections since 1984, relying on his 13-point Keys to the White House model. He even got it right this year, when most pundits and polls were wildly, disastrously incorrect. But Lichtman didn't just get it right; he predicted in September that Donald Trump would win the presidency, more than a month before Election Day. That was also before a swathe of potentially game-changing October surprises rocked the news cycle, including a tape of Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women and FBI director James Comey reigniting conspiracies about Hillary Clinton's use of a private server as Secretary of State.
Recommended Reading: Trump's own polling models prove accurate
Trump's Big Data Mind Explains How He Knew Trump Could Win Izzie Lapowsky, Wired While it could take some time to uncover the finer points of why the polls were so far off in the 2016 presidential election, the head of President-elect Donald Trump's data team knew the candidate had a good chance of pulling out a stunning upset. Wired talked with Cambridge Analytica's Matt Oczkowski to get some details on their internal polling models which correctly predicted how most of the states would vote.
This election proved you're only as good as your data
As you've probably heard, while Hillary Clinton won the majority of the popular vote, Donald Trump was awarded more than 270 votes in the Electoral College. Many, particularly on social media, were incredulous, partly at the candidates but also at the pollsters -- in particular, famous polling analysts like Nate Silver from Disney's FiveThirtyEight blog. Silver rose to fame as the guy who successfully predicted the past few presidential elections. In 2008, he correctly predicted 49 of 50 states, and in 2012 he nailed all 50. With that, plus an impressive showing in the midterms, a legend was born. The 2016 presidential election was not so kind to FiveThirtyEight, with misses in the battlegrounds of Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin turning the odds quickly in favor of Trump. But throughout nearly the entire general election campaign, Mrs. Clinton was an overwhelming favorite. So the question is: What went wrong? There are explanations all over the internet this week, but there's one that should not be overlooked: Polling ...
Google Search will show election results as they come in
The US election has been good business for Google, thanks in part to its localized ballot data and state voting guides. The search giant wrote that it will soon show election results directly in search after polls close, including "Presidential, Senatorial, Congressional, Gubernatorial races as well as state-level referenda and ballot propositions." It also revealed counties with the highest voter interest in key battleground states, based on the search query "where to vote."
Twitter for Mac lets you search for GIFs when a photo won't do
Twitter launched a handy GIF search tool inside its mobile apps back in February, and now the social network is bring the animated images to the desktop. With an update to the Mac software, users can expect to quickly find an appropriate GIF for the situation, so long as you're using the official Twitter application. The image search looks similar to the mobile version, where clicking the "GIF" button from the compose window brings up a smattering of categories. Of course, there's an old-fashioned search bar too, if you have something specific in mind.
You can now make Twitter polls last as short as you want
There's a question burning in the back of your mind, and the only people that can answer it to your satisfaction are your Twitter followers. That's exactly what Twitter polls are for -- but maybe you don't want to wait a week for an answer. Maybe you want it ten minutes from now. Luckily for you, that's now possible: Twitter has updated the widget to allow polls to be timed for anywhere between five minutes and seven days.
Twitter opens up polls to everyone
If you've been wondering which candy your Twitter followers prefer -- Red Vines or Twizzlers, -- the social networking company has your back. Starting today, the micro-blogging service is rolling out its poll feature to iOS, Android and on Twitter.com for desktop. Now users can embed two-question ballots into their tweets. Each poll is open for 24 hours and all votes are secret. So, no one will know about your secret love of Twizzlers when you live in a Red Vines family. When the poll does expire, everyone that participated could potentially receive a push notification of the results. The service looks at your current alerts and judges if poll alerts will overwhelm you. Those alerts could compel users to launch Twitter for something other than a 140-character tirade about the new Star Wars trailer and that's exactly what Twitter is looking for.
