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Ask500People.com is an interesting addition to the plethora of Web 2.0 concepts out there. Users can easily post a question and the community decides if it is a worthwhile question (by first voting on the value of the question).

Once the question hits prime time, it appears on the front page and then anyone can vote on it. You can see what the vote was by country and they have a Google Maps mashup that shows you who has just voted.

Who Should be able to Vote for the US President?

So I thought I better give Ask500People a go. In the spirit of promoting a truly democratic world (and with tongue firmly in cheek), my question was:

Do you agree that people from all over the world should be able to vote for the US president?

Yes - he’s the most powerful man in the world and most Americans don’t bother to vote anyway.
or
No - only Americans should be able to vote for their president.

You can see the results here.

Since the poll became ‘live’ at a time of day when the US was awake and everyone else in the world was asleep, my question was mostly answered by Americans and it was (not surprisingly) roundly trounced.

There is a comments facility in Ask500People. The favourite for my question was a Canadian person who wrote:

Clever question, I don’t think most people are cluing into it yet.

Using Ask500People in Education

There are plenty of polling solutions on the Web, but Ask500People is kinda clever since they provide a widget allowing any site owner to include the question. In this way, you get more involvement than if it was restricted to one site only.

It could be useful for students to get some ‘authentic data’, but also to learn how to evaluate the data collection method and the validity of results.

A big plus us that it is very easy to use.

Criticisms of Ask500People.com

1. There is no Search facility - how dumb is that?
2. They don’t actually ask 500 people - it is currently limited to 100.
3. If you land on the results page, you cannot see what the full question was. (For example, for my question, you just see abbreviations: Yes - he’… anyway. and No - only…esident.). That’s pretty hopeless.

Current Question

Here’s the current question. So go ahead, vote!

I love what the Web allows us to do. Imagine even 10 years ago trying to ask people all over the world their opinion on just about anything - for free!