WotW: Go On, Give Your Friends a Wedgie

Wanna give your friends a Wedgie? Oh, sorry, is that a little too forward of me? I don’t mean the classic middle school prank/torture, I’m talking about Wedgies, a free online polling site.

Yes, Wedgies is a real site. And it’s not what you’d think either. The whole concept of Wedgies is simple: allow anybody to make simple polls, super quick and easily share them. The Wedgies duo developed the site in Salt Lake City, Utah, and soon moved operations to the bigger market of Las Vegas. Their vision was to allow everyone to give their friends a Wedgie, and to have fun doing it.

The process is surprisingly simple. I say surprisingly because most other polling sites are a pain to setup, embed and share. Not so with Wedgies.

You get started by signing up for a free account using your Facebook or Twitter login. Once you’re signed up and logged in, click the Ask link at the top of the page.

Here, you ask a question, in 100 characters or fewer. Then you provide your answer options. You can do up to five choices (more through the paid version), though there is definitely an advantage to doing only two choices when it comes to sharing. More on that later. You can also add an image, just for fun, if you want.

Once you have your question written, the next step is to share. You can do this through Twitter, Facebook or by embedding it on your website. You can also just share the link to the question itself and send that to people. Each question gets its own unique voting page.

If you’ve written a question with just two choices, sharing it on Twitter will place two links in the tweet. When a Twitter user clicks on a link, it counts as a vote for that particular option. This makes Twitter polling both easy and fun.

 

Which Nov. book to movie release are you more excited about?
Ender’s Game http://t.co/EhPSmKybOz
or
Catching Fire http://t.co/JnYR2rDSoc
— Debra Hawkins (@wifeeclectic) November 13, 2013

The embed option is perfect for bloggers. Now you can get quick feedback in the middle of your post.

 

For longer posts, an embedded poll can break things up and keep your readers engaged.

Besides the easy nature of building and sharing a Wedgie, one of the best features is the instant, anonymous feedback of the results. And everyone can see it.

There are also paid options, like enhanced sharing, branding and SMS polling, so if you really get into this, you can definitely make it worth your while.

I’ve been using Wedgies at work for awhile now and it has been great. It’s biggest use? Deciding where to go to lunch. Instead of debating over email, or shouting across offices, we send out a Wedgie with a few options and the one with the most votes wins. Simple.

If you’re a blogger, a mom trying to figure out this weekend’s activity or just want to have fun with some friends, Wedgies can provide a simple, fun solution.