Summary
- Social media apps like Instagram and WhatsApp have embraced short videos, while Discord remains true to its community-focused purpose.
- Discord has finally added support for polls, allowing users to create polls with up to 10 different responses and set durations.
- The new feature will make it easier to moderate polls and eliminate instances of random emoji reactions.
Social media apps aren’t as distinct in purpose and format as they were before, but a few have withstood the sea-change phenomenon like short-format videos and ephemeral content, supported in most Meta apps, including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. However, apps like Reddit, Discord, and Telegram have stayed true to their purpose, being more selective when adding new features. Discord took its time, but has finally added support for polls.
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Like Reddit, Discord fosters community-style interactions on servers, which then have channels within them to categorize conversation, much like Reddit’s use of subreddits and post flairs. Polling isn’t a new concept for such social platforms, because Reddit introduced the feature in March 2020, hot on the heels of Telegram in January. WhatsApp is also pivoting in a similar direction with its new Communities feature, and it added polling support in announcement groups late last year.
Until now, the only way to poll Discord servers about anything has been through emoji reactions on a message posted in the correct channel. Even then, there’s a risk the poll will get buried under subsequent conversation unless it is pinned. The platform developers are well aware of this limitation, addressing it directly in the launch video for the new polls feature.
Discord polls are the need of the hour
You can create a new poll in any channel, chat, or group conversation using the plus icon beside the message field, and tapping Poll in the menu that appears. The poll creation UI allows setting up as many as 10 different responses, a poll description, and duration (one hour, four hours, eight hours, one day, three days, or seven days). You can choose whether respondents can select only one option, or as many as they please.
Discord shows a check mark beside the options you select, and interestingly, you don’t need to worry about skewed results because some respondents only wanted to see the results — Discord has a Show results button visible just beside the Vote option.
Support documentation for the feature clarifies that you cannot use slash commands to create polls, and anonymous response collection isn’t available either. Users can modify their response while the poll remains active and any user can create them, though. Polling should be available on all Discord servers in the next few days.
