After over two months of silence from polldaddy where their last offering was the Twitter enabled polldaddy polls and 3 competitors (Quibblo, Poll Boutique and Poll Authority) have raised into the blog poll widget niche against them. Polldaddy surprises with the answer to that new competitors and more.

Polldaddy Jr.

Polldaddy Jr. is indeed Polldaddy son because it is a Poll creator and editor for OpenSocial Widget-apps. so it got the same features from the regular polldaddy poll creator and editor and it will get the updates from the main one as they happen but with the big difference that it sits inside a container that can be extended into OpenSocial compatible Social Network or adjusted for non OpenSocial compatible ones.

We are launching a new mini app called PollDaddy Jr. This app  has all
of the features of our main site built into a container than can be
deployed to any partner site. We are launching this as an OpenSocial
app today on MySpace, Hi5 and Orkut. We will be adding more OpenSocial
enabled sites as the weeks roll. The great thing about PollDaddy Jr.
is that it can be deployed on any site so we can add it to sites like
Piczo (one of our partners) which don’t support OpenSocial.

As stated, Polldaddy will start with MySpace right now and enable polldaddy jr into hi5 and Orkut during next week in terms of OpenSocial enabled Social Networks. but will also adjust it for one of their partners that is Piczo and later will add other OpenSocial enabled social networks (which ones are left exactly?) as the weeks pass

I will be playing with this once it touches hi5 and Piczo so i can compare how they adapt and if the widget-apps generated are indeed identical.

The last bit is that they are also offering to adapt the Polldaddy Jr. app if you want to use it in another service that makes sense for Polldaddy to work with.

http://www.myspace.com/polldaddypolls

Polldaddy API

Linked as the product of what partnerships can bring, like the one they offer for Sprout. Polldaddy has no released an API so third parties can use Polldaddy services and make up other kind of widgets and Apps or enable Polldaddy widget into other apps.

We are also launching a fully functional API for use by partners
(SproutBuilder.com for example).

This is all part of a grander plan to increase distribution and get
our application in front of more people. Partners can now choose to
use our API, or if that’s not suitable then we can deploy PollDaddy JR
into their site with little work needed on their side. This lets them
offer poll services to their own userbase. In a sense we are trying to
widgetize our whole platform.

That part of widgetizing their whole platform is of course music in this blog.i sense more coverage in the future.

Media Polls

This is bad news for both Poll Boutique and  Poll Authority that have based big part of their offerings in Media Polls.

On our main site we have launched media polls. You can now embed
images, YouTube videos and Seesmic videos to your poll answers.

A new offering for the main site and it not only includes Youtube but Seesmic? wow. unexpected. Loic is damn everywhere these days.

This is something i was expecting and talking about. Polldaddy needed this fast to not let others overcome them on that niche. now the ball is Poll Boutique and Poll Authority court to respond to this A.S.A.P. if they want to stay in course. right now the media poll support Images and Video on multiple instances but no Audio yet, so for that Poll Boutique is still ahead.

Worpress Plugins

They are now offering plugins for both WordPress Blog versions:

We now have full suite of pluggins for all version of wordpress.org
and wordpress.com

This brings a better integration for user in WordPress. but if they are supporting non hosted versions of wordpress, then i demand to know why there are not Polldaddy Blogger page element versions?.

Some Numbers on Polldaddy

Almost 100,000 polls are created each month, which in turn generate
100 million widget impressions, and collect 11 million votes.
We are a profitable company through the sale of Pro accounts.
2 guys – bootstrapped to date. (no funding)

Wow. 2 guys?. incredible. but i think is time to hire at least one person more so they can react faster.

Final Notes

Great updates on Polldaddy part, it should be enough for them to hold the lead in the space but if they could now concentrate in making the widgets prettier? . they are now kind of ugly. just saying.

Besides that, i think they got it. right now the only areas left to improve is to add even more media options, more customization, better look and better analytics. that is where the competitors had been concentrating and should continue to do so in order to keep Polldaddy in its toes.

http://www.myspace.com/polldaddypolls

Polldaddy.com