Facebook sets tongues wagging with Davos poll demonstration

US-- Facebook set tongues wagging this weekend after demoing its polling capabilities at the World Economic Forum in Davos – prompting speculation the social network may be looking to make money by moving deeper into market research services.

The company starting offering a quick-polling tool to its members in 2007, charging $5 to create a survey and up to $1 per response.

It quietly pulled that application late last year, but retained the capability to continue surveying users itself.

This was what was demoed at Davos on Friday during a debate in which business figures including News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch, DuPont CEO Ellen Coleman, and David Rubenstein, co-founder founder of private equity group Carlyle, gave advice to President Barack Obama on the subject of competitiveness.

At the outset of the debate Facebook members were asked to give their view on whether Obama's economic stimulus plan was on target, and more than 100,000 responses were received within the hour.

But reports are split on whether this demo was to drum-up demand for an as-yet unannounced new survey service, or whether it was simply designed to make some noise for Facebook's new Engagement Ads concept – interactive adverts that are being sold to companies which allow them to ask simple questions of site users to encourage them to interact with marketing content.

Certainly as it stands, the Davos experiment seems more in keeping with the latter scenario than the former. When Facebook removed its polling tool last year it noted that there were plenty of alternative polling applications available free of charge through the site should users want to keep surveying their friends and other members.

However, b2b networking site LinkedIn recently began selling samples of its users for business research purposes – flagging MR as one possible revenue stream for those social networks that are struggling to monetise, or those looking to shore up revenues in the face of an expected decrease in ad spending.

• See the March edition of Research Magazine for an in-depth look at social networks and how they are playing the survey game.

Author: Brian Tarran