ProLog

David Frum, Bush(43) speech writer turned conservative blogger at frumforum.com (formerly NewMajority.com), posted an interesting interview with pollster Scott Rasmussen about his latest venture in automated polling.    Apparently bowing to the pressure to introduce polls commissioned by a third parties into Rasmussen Reports, Scott recently spun off Pulse Opinion Research, specializing in client-centric polling.

In the interview, Rasmussen announced that Pulse will introduce a service next month that allows anyone on the Net to commission a poll for as little as $600.  The polling mechanism will use Rasmussen’s standard automated telephone inquiry system.

While the system comes under routine fire by critics who question the fairness of automated queries, unedited questions from otherwise anonymous clients will likely only strengthen their arguments.  Still, its a bold step by one of the innovators of the polling industry.  If Pulse can provide more than the autodialer with consultation services on questioning and statistical analysis of the results, it would be the first step into true open source polling.

To say there are many online forums is a typical understatement of the Internet age.  By Google’s last  count, there are over 350,000,000.  In this Web 2.0 world, the mantra remains “power to the people” or, more realistically, “let your visitors provide your content”.  That’s why I’m always encouraged when I see people trying to do more with visitors’ content besides  simply posting it.

minekey.com is one example which attempts to provide some structure to the din of opinions expressed by its purported 3 million posts each day.  Integrated into its bulletin board however, is a simple polling mechanism that allows subsequent visitors to register a simple agree/disagree vote on each opinion.  The polling results are tabulated and presented  in real-time.  Results are available in whole, or categorized by gender and age; two factors you are asked to identify about yourself when you register.

To be sure, there’s a lot more they could do to understand the data they collect.  Since the polls are created entirely by their members, the questions are awkwardly worded, and often blatently biased.  I’d also like to see results cross-referenced or correlated between different, but related questions. It’s also apparent that Minekey needs to further promote the polling features of their service, since many more members leave comments on each post than votes.

Never the less, Minekey is a fresh look at one of the Internet’s basic services.  Check it out.