Bing and FOX News Introduce Real-time Online Polling
Microsoft search engine Bing.com and FOX News Channel (FNC) are teaming up on the Bing Pulse online voting tool, enabling viewers to share their opinions and reactions to news commentary in real time online at http://Bing.com/politics.
With the new feature, viewers will have the opportunity to interact with the panel segment on FNC’s “Special Report with Bret Baier” (weeknights at 6 p.m. ET) to offer their feedback instantaneously.
“This is a first for evening news,” said Josh Gottheimer, general manager of Strategic and Special Projects at Microsoft Corp. “With the Bing Pulse, viewers get a seat at the table to weigh in on the discussion. It’s the perfect marriage of the Internet, Bing’s big data technology and television news programming.”
Earlier this year, Bing and FNC debuted the Bing Pulse as part of the network’s coverage of the 2013 State of the Union address.
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The Bing Pulse allows people to join the conversation by “voting” every five seconds on their reactions to the content they are watching during the panel’s discussions. Viewers simply go to http://Bing.com/politics from a computer, tablet or mobile device to connect with the conversation.
Unlike typical polls, says Microsoft, the Bing Pulse allows people to self-identify as male or female and register their party affiliation. The Bing Pulse enables Americans to track and share opinions on the top issues of the day.
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As the panel discussion progresses on the program, viewers have five choices to characterize how they are feeling about the discussion: strongly agree, somewhat agree, neutral, somewhat disagree and strongly disagree.
The live count of the number of “pulses,” or votes, is shown as a line graph of how users react to language and issues throughout the discussion that is visible on-screen.
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In addition to measuring the sentiment of the audience about the conversation, the Bing Pulse also provides an intensity score, which highlights the moments on the panel segment when the greatest number of viewers voted at the same time.
Data is split by gender and political affiliation. During the course of the program’s panel, the Bing Pulse features updated results every few seconds on the TV screen with data also available at http://Bing.com/politics. Final results are reported at the end of the program.
During a monthlong pilot of the tool on the Friday editions of “Special Report” in August, millions of votes were cast and as many as 60,000 votes per minute were recorded during the panel discussions on the program, according to Microsoft.
Photo courtesy: Microsoft
