What are your opinions on aerial application?

How can I get opinions quickly on Facebook ?

• Dear Hive Mind what is the best Polling / Voting Application on Facebook ? I need a solution to save time in gathering opinions as I'm currently drowning under the volume of emails going backwards and forwards. I'm trying to use Facebook as a collaborative tool for a group of independent retailers. Getting their opinions is very useful and allows me to be closer to my customers. However structuring their feedback is a nightmare ! I need a way to get feedback as efficiently as possible from both myself the survey sender and the people I am sending the survey too. Time is limited to create the polls, I'm not technical in anyway with html etc. so needs to be simple and user friendly. Everything I've picked up so far has been learnt from googlizing. My target audience are not overly computer literate, they have great time pressures managing their day-today business and they procrastinate making decisions ! so I need the survey to be VERY easy to participate in. Ideally I'd like for them to be able to see who else shares their opinions so they can collaborate further if applicable without me managing. I need a clear window in time to gather opinions (eg This could range from 24hrs to 6 months). I need to be able to add pictures as a must, ideally notes too. Functionality to create polls would ideally be like Google Docs - Forms. I have used Google Docs Forms quite a bit in the last year, it's great but it has no options for image use. I have tried using Google Wave but I'm struggling to use so I'm sure my audience will. I want to be able to evaluate, act and move onto the next task as quick as I can. I'm planning on working with about a dozen people initially with a view to expand out to 200+ if I can get it to work and I get buy-in from the 12. If any further information is needed let me know. All help is greatly appreciated !

• Answer:

  Internet polls are typically worthless as they are boring, of benefit to you, a cost to the polled and therefore are severely biased by those willing to "waste" their time and are actually honest in their responses. Bare facebook isn't up to the task and even if you hired development of a custom facebook application, it'd still be subject to the bias noted ("hmm, fill out this survey or play fishtownvilleplace?"). Google Wave might be what you want, but as you mention it isn't even Google "BETA" status yet; I generalize from that the tool you really want doesn't yet exist. Structuring the feedback probably is the nightmare you claim. Hire someone to do it. This isn't a sarcastic suggestion.