The Evolution of Online Surveys - Take the Viral with Facebook

I have to admit, I hadn't really thought much about surveys going viral.  Because in MY world (and we all know that's the one that counts -- right?) I work with customer surveys and that means confidential information.  So the LAST thing on my mind was surveys going viral.

Then I got a call from Vivek (our fearless CEO) asking me to beta test his viral survey concept on DIYMarketers.  Of course I said "yes", but I just didn't really get it.  Again.  I was stuck in my own world and couldn't really see the benefit of surveys going viral.

As we talked Vivek slowly but surely lead me out of my head and into the realm of interesting possibilities;

• What if you were able to actually collect data from populations that were previously unreachable to you.  For example, say my network or lists consisted mainly of marketing people, but I might want to get the perspective of engineers on this topic.  A viral survey picked up by an engineer and spread to his network would allow the engineer to collect data without creating a survey and allow ME to see how engineers thought differently from marketing people.


• What if you were able to gather demographic information effortlessly and for FREE?  Connecting with Facebook and it's monster demographic databases is a researcher's dream come true.  Viral surveys interfacing with Facebook make that a reality.

So take a moment and learn MORE about how Facebook is changing the face of online surveys - check out this article on Research Access.