Pew Research took a long look at what Twitterati say about major social and political issues and compared it to what opinion polls say. The differences are significant.

“At times the Twitter conversation is more liberal than survey responses, while at other times it is more conservative,” the research firm said when announcing the results. “Often it is the overall negativity that stands out.”

For example, Twitter users were 46 percent positive about California’s February 2012 same-sex marriage ruling, and only 8 percent negative. Public opinion polls, however, which are both anonymous and run with at least some attempt at scientific sampling, were only 33 percent positive — and 44 percent negative. And while Twitter Nation was 77 percent happy that President Barack Obama was re-elected, America was only 52 percent unhappy, and 45 percent unhappy.

In addition, during the October presidential debates 66 percent of Americans polled thought GOP candidate Mitt Romney had done a better job, but 59 percent of Twitter users thought Obama had won.

Why the difference?

Pew says that Twitter users are only a small slice of the overall population. Only about three percent of U.S. adults tweet or retweet news, and only 13 percent say they read Twitter updates. This small slice, according to Pew, skews young and skews Democrat … and skews the overall reaction to public events.

The upshot on Twitter polls?

“While this provides an interesting look into how communities of interest respond to different circumstances, it does not reliably correlate with the overall reaction of adults nationwide,” the Pew report says.

photo credit: woodleywonderworks via photopin cc

If that doesn’t sound very exciting, that’s because … it’s not. Apparently, the innovation well is running a little dry at Ask.

“At SXSW last year, we experimented with polls,” Ask’s director of product management Frank Loeffler told me yesterday. “We built an app called PollRoll … and saw a fantastic level of engagement.”

Users could ask any question, serious or entertaining, add some answers, and send it to any number of other users. People ended up creating over 90 polls, Loeffler told me, and that gave Ask some new thoughts about an old idea.

“This is actually an underserved market,” Loeffler said. “People think polls have been around forever and they’re no big deal. But we think it’s perfect for our brand and our customers.”

So Ask created a polling platform that allows the company to make polls and place them anywhere on the site. At first they’ll be editorially curated, but over time, anyone will be able to create and publish a poll. Ask’s goal is to help users explore more about topics, ultimately learning more than if they just find a simple answer.

There’s a risk to that, of course, given the nature of web users. One question I checked about best smartphone models, for instance, featured the “samsaung ipenis 3000000000″ as an answer. When I re-checked hours later, it had been deleted.

But the bigger risk is that the site that basically started the question-and-answer genre that Quora and others have since virtually taken over has devolved into a pageview-generation engine with cheap and easy “engagement” strategies, irrelevant ads, and no significant innovation in fostering either the development of great answers or the type of community that will create them.

This, for example, was the only answer I saw to a question about the impact of Pearl Harbor:

That is not going to win you an A on your school paper. And it can’t possibly compete with the average level of the worst answers on Quora.

And adding polls to a foundering Ask might put a few more dollars in owner InterActive Corp’s wallet temporarily — it needs them, after spending almost $2 billion on the site last decade — but it’s not going to transform a nag into a stud.

Post-convention polls show a bounce for President Obama in the upcoming election, after a period of neck-and-neck jockeying that stretches back to June. But traditional polls, largely run by large news organizations, may be just waking up to a reality that online indicators have shown for a long time.

Ask people to bet on a candidate, to put down real cash on who will really win – and the smart money, for some time, has been on Obama. Certainly that’s the case at so-called prediction markets, forums where people can place bets, often with real currency, on what will happen in November. As of this writing, odds from three independently run online markets present a 65-plus percent probability that Obama will win, including odds at my own startup, Media Predict.

That’s no slam-dunk. Still, Obama has a clear lead. In fact, according to the markets, he’s had that advantage since the start of his campaign. But mainstream media only seem to be waking up to this fact in light of a recent post-convention “bounce” – endorsed by, yes, those beloved, slow, traditional polls.

Well, welcome to the party. For those who will want to remain a step ahead in this campaign, we recommend looking to the markets instead. Their message is clear and strong.

Media Predict’s 64% probability of an Obama victory is virtually identical to those furnished by other forums, such as the Iowa Electronic Markets (a real-money futures market the CFTC permits for purposes of academic research) as well as offshore gambling sites like Intrade. And there’s good reason to believe what the markets say. A 16-year retroactive study found the Iowa Electronic Markets to outperform the AP and the Gallup Polls 74% of the time when predicting presidential vote share on the eve of the election. Moreover, the study found the IEM to be almost always more accurate when predicting from 100 days away or more – a point we passed some time ago.

But markets’ strengths go beyond mere prediction. After all, knowing the future is nice – but it’s even better to know what to do about it. That’s where things really get cool.
Where polls can only describe what people are thinking at a given snapshot in time, a market – not unlike a venture investment – looks far ahead to see the bottom line. That means markets are sober. However riled we may get over Bain or the Birthers, most everyone will think dispassionately if a few bucks are on the line. And notably, once you ask market participants why they bet on one candidate or another, the most frequent answer is not a hot-button issue. It’s not the economy, stupid. Nor terrorism, nor Mitt Romney’s taxes, nor Paul Ryan’s workout plan.

Overwhelmingly, people say that Obama’s campaign will simply execute – by presenting a likeable candidate who makes his case. And Romney’s campaign won’t. A few quotes:

• “Obama … seems to be able to tell better ‘stories’ than his opponent.”
• “Obama will win due to him getting on everybody’s good side a little.”
• “Romney campaign is so wishy-washy I can’t imagine him pulling it out.  The media likes to keep it close to keep the political ad dollars rolling in, but I don’t think it’s as close as we are being led to believe.”

Breaking down the numbers, almost a third of people who bet in favor of Obama argued that he’ll run a better campaign – easily the biggest reason among Obama backers. The percentage of people who bet on Romney for that same reason? Just 12%. It would be interesting to see if that figure changes in the wake of the controversial comments from Romney that came to light yesterday after being caught on hidden camera.

These are not the biased left-leaning emotions of Internet-enabled youngsters, as a traditional pollster might object. Our data shows that many who bet on Obama don’t intend to vote for him. They don’t even like him. They just feel he presents the better investment:

• “He seems to be the popular choice, even though he sucks!!!!”
• “I hate the thought, but I’m realistic.”
• “Although I will be voting for the Republican Party I believe that Barack Obama will win.”
• “It causes me pain to do this, but I think he is the safe bet!”

In this regard, markets see the big picture and stand far away from the breathless hand-wringing that rules the 24-hour news cycle. This is particularly true of those darlings of political ads and news analysis alike: “the issues.” Yes, television analysts often disclaim that no single issue can sway an election – generally before they commence to shouting about one at length.

But markets give us the ability to gauge how much, or how little, any single issue impacts the whole. Of people who bet in favor of Obama, less than 4% justified themselves by citing the economy, gay marriage, or military issues. And while a significant 8.5% of Romney backers cited the economy as a major factor, less than 1% cited much-maligned Obamacare.

Rather, the markets’ view is holistic and bottom-line. It’s all about the candidate – the person – and his ability to execute a campaign without mistakes. Obama has an edge, as we’ve seen, and other stats flesh out why:

• Probability of winning was the most frequent answer, but elsewhere 23% of participants bet on Obama because of personal feelings of approval. Only 14% express this view when betting in favor of Romney.
• Instead of betting for Romney, backers were much more often driven by some form of anti-Obama sentiment. Some participants put this politely by stating that the country “needs change” (18%). Others expressed more explicit disapproval of the Obama administration (33%).

In the end, the markets’ message to campaigns is simple. Be likeable. Win confidence. Execute your plan without messing up. And when can you know you’re succeeding in these tasks? Not when the poll numbers go up, but when the bets do.

Indeed Media Predict invites both campaigns to test the wisdom of the markets as they enter the home stretch – as we’ve seen from our own ability to predict television hits, often from just a paragraph idea, the markets can help maximize the outcomes of any marketer, politician, or executive willing to use them.

News organizations, though, may not be committing to these modern methods anytime soon. “We love what you’re doing,” one broadcast reporter told us last week, in so many words, “but we’ve just put millions into these polls.”

To that we offer a simple antidote. For a voice above the din, don’t look to where news organizations have sunk their cash – look to where thousands of people like you are sinking their own.

Brent Stinski is founder and CEO of Media Predict, a market research company that uses prediction markets to forecast the performance of TV shows, advertising, and more. He has contributed to VentureBeat and Business Insider.

QuestionPro, a web-survey and market-research company, has acquired PollBob, a small startup with a website and iPhone app for community polling.

The tie-up will give QuestionPro a toehold in the growing market for mobile polling applications. PollBob says that in the two years since its founding, it has attracted more than 350,000 users who have shared their opinions via polls more than 3 million times. About 270,000 of those users came via its January acquisition of Misterpoll, an under-the-radar company that was founded in 1998 and had never taken outside funding.

QuestionPro plans to augment PollBob’s iPhone app with Android and Windows Phone apps to come.

PollBob has just two employees, cofounders Zach Kupperman and Ben Jacobson (right), and had raised a “six figure” seed round from unspecified angel investors, according to Kupperman. It is based in New Orleans and is a graduate of the New Orleans-based startup accelerator  The Idea Village.

“One of the big things we are doing with PollBob is to make it as engaging, social, and exciting as possible,” Kupperman told VentureBeat earlier this year. “Users can see polls by location and see the results roll in in real time.” That’s in contrast to Facebook’s built-in polling tools, which he characterized as “boring and not exciting in the least.”

“This is our entry into the social polling space,” said QuestionPro chief executive Vivek Bhaskaran in an email to VentureBeat. “Combined, we think we can compete with the likes of Google Consumer Surveys. The combined offering can leverage the social infrastructure that PollBob has developed along with the B2B focus QuestionPro has.”

Other competitors in the online polling market include SurveyMonkey, Vizu, PollDaddy, Twiigs, and many other, smaller companies.

“Zach and Ben have done a great job building this cutting-edge product, and we look forward to having Ben [Jacobson] join our team,” Bhaskaran said in a prepared statement. “He is a huge asset, and our customers will benefit tremendously from the capabilities this iPhone/web app has to offer, and we couldn’t be more excited about the acquisition.”

Jacobson will join QuestionPro, but Kupperman will not be staying on after the acquisition.

Founded in 2002, QuestionPro is the older, larger company. It now claims 2.5 million clients in 40 countries, including such giants as Microsoft, Honeywell, Motorola, and Safeway, charging rates from $12.50 to $99 per month for single-user licenses. It does about 300,000 to 400,000 surveys per day, according to Bhaskaran. QuestionPro has not taken any funding and is “very, very profitable,” Bhaskaran said. It was named to the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies in 2009.

The companies did not disclose terms of the deal.

Images courtesy PollBob.

Frustrated by how difficult it is to collaborate on decision-making over e-mail, AdMob founder Omar Hamoui today launched Maybe, a startup that simplifies the process of making decisions online.

Maybe is like a strange hybrid of Q&A sites like Quora, image board Pinterest, and opinion social network Thumb. People are currently using the service to find the best wedding shoes and the best iPad case, but really you can ask just about anything. (Though you don’t need Maybe to tell you which TV show to watch next: that’s Breaking Bad, folks.)

Google bought AdMob for $750 million in 2009, which helped solidify Hamoui as a rockstar in the ad business. He left Google in late 2010 and went on to create the startup incubator Churn Labs, where he dabbled in cool projects like the social app Gnonstop Gnomes. But it was Hamoui’s wife who ended up sparking the idea for the new site while shopping for a new coffee table.

“She spent of bunch of time browsing the web, collecting her options in a Gmail draft, and then sent me an email of blue links that I was supposed to click on one by one to form an opinion,” Hamoui wrote in an e-mail to VentureBeat. “By the time I got to the fourth one, I had forgotten what the first one looked like, what the prices of any of them were, and certainly had not checked reviews or anything else that would help me give her a more informed opinion.”

Right now, Maybe seems very basic: You can see the decisions other people are making and create decisions of your own. The site differs from other Q&A sites since it works more like a poll. You’re choosing answers from a pre-selected list with a click of the mouse (you can leave comments, but it isn’t necessary). You can also “Re-Maybe” items for your own submissions later.

Hamoui stresses that the site is currently just a preview of Maybe’s capabilities. Eventually the company will add a mobile interface (which he assumes will be the dominant way to browse Maybe in the future) and research tabs to inform you about the decisions you’re making.

Maybe is based in San Mateo, Calif. The company hasn’t yet disclosed funding details.

Facebook users don’t trust the company with their private data, rarely click on display advertisements, and split on the social giant’s investment status prior to the impending IPO, according to a new poll conducted by CNBC and the AP.

Shockingly, the poll data only confirms what we already know — Facebook users are wary of Facebook.

According to the poll results, 59 percent of people distrust Facebook on user data, 57 percent of users said they never click on display ads, and 26 percent said they only rarely click ads. For a company that derives over 80 percent of its revenue through ads that are powered (in part) by that private user data, this could be an issue for Facebook. The company has also done a poor job of monetizing ads via mobile devices, which is increasingly how users are accessing the site.

Facebook has plans to grow its Facebook Credits business as well as making the site a platform for financial transactions, which poll respondents were also wary of. The poll indicated that 54 percent of users don’t trust the site enough for these types of purposes. Honestly, I think this is an area where Facebook will grow despite the current emotions of people who still associate the site with trivial things like social gaming and keeping up with people you knew in the first grade. Once upon a time, the majority of people were also just as wary about using their credit card to buy things from online retail stores. And as Amazon, eBay, and others have proven, this is no longer the case.

As for Facebook’s overall valuation, the poll respondents are divided on both the company’s $100 billion valuation as well as if it’s a good investment, with people under 35 taking a more favorable stance. But not everyone is convinced Facebook’s stock will hit a home run.

“My opinion is that the IPO is taking place too late for future investors to see any benefit, so I’m basically watching it as if it’s a cash-out event for early-round investors,” writes investment blogger Lucas Krupinski. Basically, that means the stock will do great if you bought it prior to going public, but after IPO day everyone will likely dump it. However, that doesn’t say much for its long-term value.

Yahoo employees are celebrating the fact that their chief executive, Carol Bartz, has been fired.

Former Yahoo vice president Brad Garlinghouse greeted the news with a gleefully nasty tweet: “Ding dong the witch is dead.”

He’s not alone. According to a survey by Glassdoor, Bartz’s approval rating among Yahoo employees has nosedived quarter after quarter to a dismal 24% in the second quarter of 2011, before bouncing slightly to 33% in the third quarter. That means two-thirds of Yahoos have no confidence in Bartz.

For a CEO who had a 90% approval rating shortly after she took the reins in the second quarter of 2009, that’s got to be a disheartening change.

The chart above, provided by Glassdoor, shows how employees’ opinions of Bartz have declined over the past two and a half years. The numbers are based on more than 700 surveys filled out by Yahoo employees who visited Glassdoor.com. They included 275 comments on Bartz specifically.

As a point of comparison, Steve Jobs had a 97% approval rating among Apple employees before he announced he was stepping out of the CEO role in August. AOL’s Tim Armstrong has a 66% approval rating, and Google CEO Larry Page has 97% approval, but on a smaller sampling of reviews (31). Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer has a 45% approval rating; Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has 91% approval.

Further comments about Yahoo management from Glassdoor’s recent surveys:

“No strong leadership with vision & execution. Especially lacks execution.” – Yahoo principal engineer

“Be straightforward with the real problems Yahoo is facing and focus on the core business rather than spread the money over many irrelevant projects that are destined to die from the day they start.” – Yahoo employee

“Very low employee morale is taking a toll on those who still want to work here, Upper management gives the same raa-raa speeches will little to back up the talk.” – Yahoo employee

“Lack of numbers driven decision making, lack of customer focus. Top leadership denies the world changed so we are still pursuing the portal business when the world rapidly changes to mobile, apps, social networks and location based personal solutions.” – Yahoo product manager

“Keep fighting the good fight; keep employees motivated, and reward them for doing well! Do better at identifying top talent and nurturing, stimulating, and retaining that talent.” – Yahoo technical employee

“please stop making senseless speeches about your vision and strategic plans. Instead, focus more on quality engineering and addressing the platform problems. Please don’t attempt to save a few bucks by outsourcing.” – Yahoo technical employee

“go away already!” – Yahoo web analytics manager

Related articles

• Yahoo fires chief executive Carol Bartz as company’s ad share falls to Google, Facebook (venturebeat.com)
• Yahoo fires chief executive Carol Bartz (venturebeat.com)
• As Bartz firing shows, patience is wearing thin at big tech corporate boards (venturebeat.com)
• A timeline of turmoil at Yahoo (venturebeat.com)

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Today is Windows Phone 7 day in the US — the day when consumers will finally be able to throw down some coin and snag a WP7 device of their very own.

You can now purchase the HTC Surround, Samsung Focus (both on AT&T’s network), and HTC HD7 (on T-Mobile) from Microsoft’s online store for $199.99 with a two-year contract. All of the devices (along with the unique looking Dell Venue Pro, if rumors hold true) will also be on Microsoft’s retail store shelves as of this morning.

If you’re looking to save some money, you can also grab a WP7 device from Dell’s online store for $149.99, or from Amazon for $99.99.

At last, after months of teasing, we’ll finally be able to see if consumers have bought into Microsoft’s mobile rebirth. Judging from the buzz I’ve been hearing, users are impressed with Windows Phone 7′s slick interface — but I’m not entirely sure if they’re wowed enough to choose Microsoft’s platform over the quickly maturing Android, or Apple’s more polished iPhone experience.

At this point, Microsoft doesn’t have many hardcore mobile defenders, so it has to work even harder to convince users that it’s not going to screw up this mobile OS like it screwed up with Windows Mobile. The addition of Xbox Live integration may be compelling enough for some users, as VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi noted in his WP7 review, and the platform offers features like free phone locating and automatic cloud storage for photos. Microsoft has also been hard at work courting and supporting developers to deliver  quality apps for WP7, which has led to an impressive amount of polished apps ready for the platform’s launch.

Clearly Microsoft has done its homework for Windows Phone 7 — but will it make a difference? Tell us what you think by taking our poll:

Are you jumping on the Windows Phone 7 bandwagon?online surveys

Via Engadget