Polladium

Overview

Polladium.com officially launched in May 2009. It is founded by The Ambitious, Inc.

Inspired in part by the recent success of niche social-network sites such as Digg.com and Twitter.com the site allows users to set up a poll on any topic of interest. Users can respond and add a brief comment limited in length like those on twitter. Categorization, discussion, external links and a comprehensize API are also available. Social networking is facilitated by Facebook's Share feature and the ability to follow a user's VoxBox.

Polladium.com is different from other polling sites in that polls are not restricted to any particular audience -- anonymous users, Polladium.com members, and members of other sites (through the API) can all participate. The results are presented separately by audience, and in total. Thus, the focus of the site is not about polling your friends to see which movie or bar to attend that evening, but rather to gauge the opinions of your friends and your neighbors on a variety of current issues.

In its first few months of operation, most polls ask questions about politics, lifestyle and technology.

Editorial

It is ironic that sharing content such as photos, videos, and even what you had for breakfast is now quite common on the internet, while sharing opinions is less so. Communication of opinions on the web is restricted to email, blogs, forums and comments -- none of which is a very efficient way to organize opinion data or even to know what your friend (or your mom) thinks about a particular issue.

Thus, there are some users who feel that the site is 'better than a blog', combining the best parts of a blog, twitter, and facebook into one site.

Polladium is similar to other polling sites like Polldaddy, but not for the faint of heart. Users may share their opinions of the newest tech device, but also share opinions on hot-button issues like politics, religion, abortion, birth control, and personal finance -- topics that are typically avoided in normal, real-world conversation. This makes Polladium a somewhat risky venture for its users, and its founders. If successful, Polladium.com will be yet another illustration that online socializing can evolve more freely than its real-world counterpart.

Tech notes

Polladium.com, and its founders Ambitious, Inc, continue to release new features and doubtless have many more in the pipeline. They have just recently added an API, which allows blogs and other websites to 'launch their own polladium' and integrate it into an existing online community.