Show of Hands: A Poll Lot of Fun!

The estimated reading time for this post is 3 minutes

You might love me or hate me for the app I am recommending today. You might love me because the app is a whole lot of fun, informative and entertaining to one and all. You might hate me because it is too easy to get caught up in this app and lose all track of time. If you are the type of person who likes to lose yourself in StumbleUpon, you will surely enjoy today’s app.

Have you ever wondered if your opinion is in the majority or the minority? Have you felt that you must be the only one who feels a certain way? Have you disagreed with a friend over an issue and then wondered which of you agreed with the majority of people? If so, then you should grab Show of Hands, a free app from the iTunes App Store.

Show of Hands is a polling app that surveys people’s preferences between two choices. The choices can be fun, such as “Chips Ahoy or Oreos?” or weighty, such as “Would it have been better to capture Osama Bin Laden alive?”

The app is free but asks that you fill out a profile with your with the typical sociological questions: age, gender, political affiliation and zip code where you live (sorry, it’s just the US for now). The only required information is your zip code, but nobody checks to see if you enter the correct one.

The app developer, Tony Bacos, promises that the data is only being collected to share with others through the app, he is not selling it or profiting from it in any way. Mr. Bacos pinky swears in the app description on iTunes, so you know he must be telling the truth.

Whether you tell the truth or not in your profile is up to you and may be based upon your privacy concerns, I will leave that up to you. I value participating in surveys for three reasons:

1. I was a sociology major in college and spent a lot of time studying survey results.
2. While in college, I had a summer job doing surveys over the phone (my least favorite job ever).
3. My mother was always thrilled to participate in surveys, saying, “I’m glad to give my opinion if someone wants to hear it.”

If you want to check out sample app questions before you fill out your profile, you can check out this website Show of Hands Archives which has questions from the past such as:

• Coke or Pepsi?
• Do you think the recent events in Tunisia and Egypt are the beginning of something bigger that will affect your life, or just another distant news headline?

When you open the app you get three new poll questions for the day. You also can vote in the poll questions that have been asked earlier in the month. By the end of May, 93 questions will show on the app, which is a lot to sift through at once. At the beginning of each month, the questions reset. This may be an app you check daily, such as The Civil War Today.

Can you see how this app could become addictive?

You have a choice of questions to answer, but you don’t get to see the results unless you vote in the poll. After you vote, you can view the answers others gave, broken down by state vs. national, male vs. female and party affiliation. You can also filter responses by age and income.

As of now, this app is only available on iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch). But if you don’t have one of these devices and want to participate in the surveys, you can go to the Show of Hands Facebook Page and see a question every day. The Facebook Page is interesting even if you have the app because you can see others’ comments on the daily questions.

Bottom Line

Whether you are curious about the opinions of others or want to voice your own opinion, you should grab Show of Hands from the iTunes App Store. You will not only enjoy participating in the surveys, you may just win some arguments with your friends!

* Image by Aimless Brooke
** Image by Jervis Salvador