Questions appear in the form of a regular tweet. Willing respondents must click the ‘Reply to this tweet’ option within the Twitter newsfeed and express their answer as one of several requested hashtags, e.g. #yes, #no or #maybe.

Wayin says that by using Twitter’s public API it can scan for responses, tally results and present analytic charts to participants in real-time within Twitter.

“The beauty of this service is its simplicity and alignment with current Twitter behaviour,” said Tom Jessiman, CEO of Wayin. “Most polling services require a user to click a link from Twitter which links to a new website. If you are on a mobile device, this can be a deal killer. By keeping the questions inside Twitter, users stay engaged without the headaches of navigating to multiple websites and applications.”

The core of the TwitPolls service is free, with additional functionality such as leaderboards, additional games or customised charts and graphs available at a price.

Wayin closed a $14m series B funding round in February, bringing the total invested in the company to $20m.

• We’ve created our own TwitPoll to test it out. Click here to take part