Aral Balkan

Syntax

The question /poll [(list, of, responses)]@user /poll response

• [(list, of, responses)]: valid responses, comma separated. If none are given, defaults to (yes, no).
• response: a valid response from the list of responses for the latest poll by the referenced user

Summary

The tPoll Twitterformat (e.g., Are Twitterformats awesome? /poll (yes, definitely, you bet)) is used to conduct quick straw-polls using Twitter. Followers can then reply to a user's latest poll with the tPoll command followed by one of the valid responses (e.g., @aral /poll definitely). It is up to the user's Twitter client to keep track of poll counts and to do spiffy things like display the results in a pie chart and allow the user to share their poll results with followers.

Raison d'être

Straw polls are a great way of getting quick feedback on things and several third-party services exist to make it easier to carry out polls with Twitter. But why use a third-party service at all when your own Twitter client can handle polls for you using the tPoll Twitterformat?

Manual usage

The tPoll Twitterformat is simple enough to be authored manually by users. e.g.,

Am I hot? /poll

The above creates a poll that accepts the default responses (yes, no)

@aral /poll no

The above helps inform Aral that his hotness is purely in his own head.

Implementation guide for Twitter client authors

A. Authoring

No special implementation for authoring is necessary (see Manual Usage, above). However you can make tPoll more visible to your users with the following optional implementation:

1. Add the ability to create a poll to your user interface
2. In the poll creation UI, ask for the question and separately provide an area for entering valid responses
3. Tweet the poll when the user is done.

B. Presenting

When poll results are received:

1. Keep a tally of the results and present them to the user in a visual manner (e.g., pie chart)
2. (Optional) Allow the user to share the results with their followers (e.g., either in text or, for example, by sharing a picture of the pie chart)

License

This Twitterformat Proposal is released under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Comments

• I think it's a good idea, but a little bit too semantic/technical for the majority of twitter users. It would be awesome if a twitter client did this automatically. Obviously there's no way to determine what question/poll mentions relate to but it would still be interesting to collate all mentions addressed to a user subsequent to them posting a question. Some of these responses would be off-topic, but it'd be interesting nonetheless.

  by Theo Denovan on 2009-12-13 21:42:45

• Good idea - using Twitter as a channel for more complex communications Not sure about the new (to me) website's theme though, it's a bit too full on for me :-)

  by fritz on 2010-01-07 16:51:14

• Hi Fritz, thanks! Can you define "full on" for me; might help me improve it in the future (no promises, though) :) You can use the Contact section to email me if you like.

  by Aral on 2010-01-09 14:12:59

• Hey Theo, You'd know which poll the responses are related to as long as people used the "reply to" feature in their Twitter clients (i.e., as long as in_reply_to_status_id was set in the API call.

  by Aral on 2010-01-10 19:03:46

• [...] tPoll: create a quick straw poll using just your Twitter client and tweets [...]

  by Aral Balkan · Introducing Twitterformats on 2010-12-31 12:48:53