It’s hard to tell if there’s a leader in the second screen app space. Each has it benefits, needs to evolve more and will have to adapt quickly as the technology around their platforms quickly changes. We’ve recently written about yap.tv since the platform is now powering USA Anywhere.
Personally, while watching TV I don’t like talking too much online — or in real life — but one of yap’s features that has intrigued me since I first played around with the service. They’re the “polls” that anyone can create within the show pages. They instantly reminded me of one of my original favorite social TV networks, the now defunct Jump The Shark, that allowed you to rate when a show started taking a turn for the worse (I recently came across somewhat of a revival site called Bone The Fish).
yap.TV’s Community Manager, Jill Pescosolido put together some of top polls and shared some commentary on them. While they’re not yet disclosing the total number of people creating and engaging with the “Polls” tool, the following gives a nice picture of the social activity going on around TV on their platform:
“I think that these five polls are a great example of how diverse our user base is!” says Pescosolido. “Our users create polls that show that they are caught up on the TV gossip and want to see who else agrees with them. Our polls also represent users who may be voicing a strong opinion about the future of NFL football (sports in general) or the recent antics of an athlete! You can tell that one of our polls was maybe written by a boyfriend who is forced to watch Dancing With The Stars and he just wants to see how many other people out there put up with the show because of the ‘scrumptious female dancers!'”
“Our polls are simple,” she said. “They allow people to speak their mind and see if other users agree. What it boils down to is that the content within our polls is just ‘fun!’ We are in the Social TV business, its not rocket science, and our polls are a great representation of that! :)”