Karen Dearne | November 25, 2008
THE creators of a locally developed Web 2.0 social networking tool for measuring mass opinion on any issue has high hopes of cracking the global market.
Marketing director Khalid Khan said iPowow's social networking tool is being tested by unions, political parties and advocacy groups
"Essentially, we've created a flash-based player with an in-built voting mechanism," iPowow marketing director Khalid Khan said.
"It's like the worm technique used for television audience feedback on political broadcasts - people register their agreement or otherwise with the issues raised while watching a short video.
"At the end, your voting is displayed as a green line, and compared against a red line, which represents a mean average of all votes on that issue."
To date, most interest has come from grassroots organisations: "the underdogs" that cannot compete for mainstream media access or budgets.
They are interested in using it to obtain feedback on campaigns and as a lobbying tool.
People simply shoot a video message (remembering to solicit responses at different points in the script) through a webcam, save it to their hard drive and then upload it to iPowow's server.
The responses are written to a database so users can get reports on how many times a video was viewed to completion, where people lost interest, and how they voted on survey questions.
One early adopter is Greens NSW MP John Kaye, who is about to revamp his website as a way of consulting his constituents and getting feedback on policy issues.
"Web 2.0 tools are part of a deepening of democracy, and we're very enthusiastic about having more interactivity," Mr Kaye said.
"That's part of a commitment to public participation in the democratic process."
Mr Kaye warned, however, that users needed to filter poll results, like any survey results, against the limitations of selected questions and selected audiences.
"Nonetheless, people express valid opinions, and in future those will form an important part of how we assess what people think of what they're doing," Mr Kaye said.
"Politicians often have concerns that people will leave offensive comments on blogs, but with this tool there's little chance for that.
"Obviously, the Young Libs could come to our website and give us low ratings that would destroy the information signal, but otherwise it gets around most of problems involved in inviting feedback."
An annual iPowow licence for grassroots groups is $495, plus $40 per video upload; an individual licence to use iPowow as a platform for YouTube videos costs $US25.
Commercial users will pay $3000 to $4000 monthly, depending on usage.