The questions people ask us most. What the app does, what you get from it, what we get from it, and how people actually use it. Straight answers, including the ones that don’t make us look good.
OpinionSphere is a place where anyone can ask a question and see what other people think. Just vote in a poll, and you’ll see the results immediately.
What makes OpinionSphere different is that the polls don’t disappear. A poll on a social network belongs to one post, and that post is buried within days. Here, every poll has its own page and link, so it can stay open and keep collecting votes for months.
We also save snapshots of the results over time, so you can see how opinions changed instead of only seeing the latest numbers.
Most polls today are about cricket, but you’ll also find movies, technology, lifestyle, and many other topics.
OpinionSphere is useful in a few different ways.
Settle debates with real numbers instead of opinions. Rather than arguing louder, you can see what thousands of people actually voted.
Find out whether your opinion is popular. Sometimes you’ll be in the majority, and sometimes you’ll discover you’re not.
Watch opinions change over time. A poll that looks one way today may look very different a month later.
Vote instantly. There’s no account required, nothing to install, and no cost. Just open a poll and vote.
Ask your own question whenever you want. Other people can vote and share their opinions, giving you perspectives beyond your own circle.
Right now, we don’t.
OpinionSphere is free to use, and we’re not selling anything.
We’re a small independent team, and the app is still in beta. Right now, our focus is on building something people enjoy using and want to come back to.
In the future, we may introduce sponsored polls, polls that other websites can embed, opinion reports for companies or news organizations, and better tools for creators. These are only ideas at this stage, and nothing has been finalized.
We never sell your personal information. That promise is in the Privacy Policy, and none of the ideas above involve it. If we introduce ways to earn money, we’ll explain what changes here before it happens.
Partly.
Your vote is counted as soon as it goes through (on a One answer poll, that’s when you confirm it), and the updated percentage appears straight away.
What doesn’t happen is the numbers constantly changing while you’re looking at the page. To see the latest votes, simply refresh the poll or open it again later.
We also save snapshots of the results at fixed times: once a day for normal polls, and once every hour for Pulse polls and timed polls. The graph under a poll adds one live point on the end of those snapshots, the current count, so the newest point moves each time you open the poll while the saved points stay fixed.
This is intentional. Numbers changing every second don’t add much value, and storing results this way keeps the app affordable to run while allowing polls to stay online for years.
People use OpinionSphere in lots of different ways.
During live events. Before a cricket match starts, someone might ask, “Will India win today?” and close the poll when the first ball is bowled. Later, the poll becomes a record of what people believed before the match began.
To settle group debates. When friends disagree, someone can create a poll and share the link in a WhatsApp group. A few dozen votes later, everyone can see what the group thinks.
To ask an audience. Creators, streamers, and community pages use polls to ask their followers questions. Unlike social media polls, the link continues to work long after the original post or video.
To make decisions. Whether you’re choosing between two names, two designs, or two ideas, a poll lets you quickly gather opinions from people outside your own circle.
For long-term questions. Some questions never become outdated. Polls like “Who is India’s greatest ODI captain?” can continue collecting votes for months or even years.
Just for fun. Simple questions like “Tea or coffee?” are often the most shared polls on the platform.
OpinionSphere is built by a small independent team.
The app is still in beta, so you’ll probably come across a few rough edges while we continue improving it.
That’s why your feedback matters so much. If something is confusing, doesn’t work properly, or simply feels awkward, please tell us through the Feedback button in the menu. Reading that feedback is one of the most valuable ways we improve the app.
Email us at [email protected]. A person reads it and replies. That’s the address for anything that needs an answer: a problem with your account, a poll you want taken down, a question about your data, or a complaint.
If you’ve just spotted a bug or have an idea, the Send feedback button in the menu is quicker. It arrives with the page you were on and the version you’re running, so we can act on it without asking. We read all of it, but we don’t reply to it, so use email when you need a reply.
Legal and privacy requests go to the same address. Our grievance officer under India’s DPDP Act is Sura Praveen, and the Privacy Policy explains what we can do for you and how long it takes.
No.
Anyone can vote without creating an account. Just open the poll link, choose an option, and you’re done. There’s no email, password, or app to install.
Your vote is remembered on the device you used, so when you return to the same poll you’ll still see your choice and how the results have changed since you voted.
You only need an account if you want to create polls, write comments, follow people, or carry your votes across devices. Alerts about a poll you voted in work without an account on the device you voted from; see the Alerts section.
It depends on the poll’s voting rules, which are shown above the options before you vote.
On a Pulse poll you can change your answer or withdraw it while the poll is open, and vote again after withdrawing.
On a One answer poll you pick an answer and confirm it. You can’t change it, but you can withdraw it until the deadline shown after you vote. The poll’s creator picks that time, from one minute to seven days, and it still applies if the poll closes first. Withdrawing is final: you can’t answer that poll again, unless its creator resets the poll, which lets everyone vote again.
On a prediction, voting and withdrawing both stop at the cutoff shown on the poll.
A withdrawn answer stops counting in the current results. The history already recorded doesn’t change. We keep a private record that you took part and withdrew, which is how a One answer poll knows not to take a second vote from you. Nobody else can see it. If you’re signed in, your profile lists the polls you withdrew from, and only you can see that list.
A Pulse poll is a poll where people can change their vote while the poll is open.
On a One answer poll you can’t change your answer, only withdraw it for a limited time. A Pulse poll is designed for questions where opinions naturally change over time: while it’s open you can change your answer, withdraw it, and vote again. Because people can update their choices, the results can move in either direction instead of gradually settling.
To capture those changes, we save a snapshot of the standing every hour instead of once a day. This creates a detailed graph that shows how opinion shifted over time.
Pulse polls are best for topics that keep evolving, such as a player’s form, an ongoing news story, or a TV show that’s still airing.
Because the person who created the poll chose to hide it, and that’s the default setting.
Showing the results before people vote can influence their choice. Many people naturally follow the option that’s already winning, which makes the poll less representative of what they actually think.
Most polls still include a “Show results without voting” link if you’re only curious about the outcome. The creator can turn that option off or choose to make the results visible from the beginning.
No matter which setting they choose, you’ll always be able to see the total number of votes. Once a poll closes, everyone who can open it can see the final result.
Because we don’t know your phone and your laptop belong to the same person.
Every vote is stored on our servers, not on your device. What your device keeps is a random ID, made the first time you opened OpinionSphere there, and a vote you cast without an account is filed under that ID. Your phone and your laptop have different IDs, so to us they look like two different people.
If you sign in, we ask whether to add the votes filed under that device’s ID to your account, and show which account that is. If you say yes, your votes and activity follow you to every device where you’re signed in. If other people use that device, check before you say yes, because some of those votes may be theirs. If you say no, they stay separate, and you can add them later in Settings.
Clearing your browser data, or uninstalling the app, throws that ID away. The votes stay counted on our side; the device just stops remembering that it cast them.
Usually, no.
By default, nobody else can see your vote. Even the person who created the poll only sees the totals, not who voted for each option.
Your handle appears next to your vote only if both of these settings are turned on: the poll creator enables the voter list for that poll, and you enable “Show my handle in voter lists” in your profile. Both are off by default.
If either is off, you’re counted in the voter list as one of the anonymous entries, like “+42 anonymous.”
One thing to be clear about: our servers do store which option your account or device chose. That’s what lets you see your own vote when you come back, and what stops a second vote. The two switches decide who else can see it, not whether we know.
Following someone helps you keep up with the polls they create.
When you follow a creator, their polls get a boost in your feed, so their latest questions are easier to spot.
They are not notified when you follow them.
A Repost lets you share someone else’s poll on your own profile without creating a copy of it.
You can also add your own comment above the repost to explain why you’re sharing it.
This keeps every vote in a single poll. Creating a duplicate poll would split the votes across two different pages, while reposting helps more people find the original poll and keeps all the votes together.
If they’re signed in, no.
Each account can vote once per poll, and a second vote from the same account is refused.
Anonymous voting is harder to protect, because someone can clear their browser data and look like a new visitor. To reduce abuse, we limit how many anonymous votes a single internet connection can add to the same poll in one day, we rate-limit voting, and the website runs a bot check before a vote is accepted.
Those measures stop most casual attempts at cheating and won’t stop a determined person. That’s one of the reasons we don’t describe OpinionSphere polls as scientific surveys.
When a poll closes, voting stops immediately. On a One answer poll, anyone still inside their time to withdraw can withdraw until that deadline.
The final results become visible to everyone who can open the poll, including people who never voted. A private poll stays private when it closes, and an unlisted one still needs its link.
Closing a poll doesn’t remove it. The poll page stays online with its complete result history and graph, so it remains available as a record even after voting has ended.
It means most of that poll’s votes were added by us.
When the app launched we gave 33 polls a set of sample votes, so there would be some history to look at instead of an empty graph. Every one of those polls carries the “Sample votes” label on its page, and the same note goes into its CSV file and its share image.
Votes cast on those polls since launch are real, and they’re counted in the same total. What the label tells you is that the total isn’t evidence of how many people took part. A poll without the label has only real votes.
No, and we don’t want to pretend they do.
OpinionSphere polls represent the people who found the poll and chose to vote. That isn’t a scientific sample of the country, and having more votes doesn’t change that. Some polls also carry votes we added ourselves at launch; those say “Sample votes” on the page.
What these polls do show is something different, and still valuable. They reveal which side is currently larger, how big the difference is, and how opinions change over time.
That’s why every poll includes a reminder that its results should not be treated as a measurement of what the whole country thinks.
The graph shows how the poll results changed over time.
It’s one of the features that makes OpinionSphere different from a typical polling app. Instead of showing only the current percentages, we save snapshots of the results so you can see how opinions evolved.
Normal polls are saved once a day, while Pulse polls and timed polls are saved once every hour.
You can look at the whole history, or only the last day, week, month or year. A shorter range rebuilds the percentages from the votes cast inside that window, so it can look quite different from the all-time result. A Pulse poll shows the standing at each hour instead, because its votes move rather than accumulate. The creator can pin a short note to a moment on the graph, to record what was happening, and anyone can download the series as a CSV file or share the graph as an image.
The longer a poll stays active, the more interesting its story becomes. A week-old poll already shows how opinions developed. A poll that’s been collecting votes for a year can show long-term changes that would otherwise be impossible to see.
These are two sections at the top of the home page that help you discover interesting polls.
Moving now shows public polls that collected votes in the last 24 hours, with the biggest recent swings first. It’s about activity: a poll can be in Moving now without its leader changing.
Closing soon shows timed polls that close within the next week. If you want your vote to count, vote before they close.
It means you predicted the correct outcome.
Some polls ask about events that will eventually have a real answer, such as who will win today’s match or which film will perform better.
Once the outcome is known, the creator marks the correct option. Everyone who voted for that option is told they “called it.”
Your successful predictions are added together on your profile, where you’ll see something like “Called 7 of 11 right.” Only polls where the creator has marked the final outcome are included in this count.
Because the last point on the line is live.
Snapshots are saved once a day, or once an hour for Pulse polls and timed polls. Between snapshots, the graph extends the line to the current count. So the newest point can move every time you open the poll, while the earlier points stay exactly where they were saved.
There’s no setting for this, and no faster mode. It’s how every graph on the site works.
Because OpinionSphere allows it on purpose.
Different people may ask the same question in slightly different ways, and you’re free to vote in whichever poll you prefer, or even both.
When you create a poll, we’ll show you similar polls that already exist, but they’re only suggestions. You’re never prevented from posting your own version.
Sometimes similar polls with different vote counts are interesting in themselves because they show how different wording can change the way people respond.
Quite the opposite.
Older polls are often the most valuable because they’ve had more time to collect votes and build a history of how opinions changed.
OpinionSphere doesn’t push a poll down in search results just because it’s old. Only closed polls gradually move lower in the listings.
The whole idea behind the app is to preserve opinions over time, so an older poll often tells a much richer story than a brand-new one.
Anyone with an account can create a poll, and creating an account is free.
Signing in takes one tap with Google, on the website or in the Android app.
Voting is different. You don’t need an account for that. We keep voting open to everyone because asking people to sign in before they vote would discourage many from participating.
Creating a poll is a public action. Your poll stays online and carries your name, and you can edit its content until 10 people have taken part, counting anyone who withdraws. An account also lets you manage your polls and receive updates about what happens after you publish them.
At least two, and at most twenty. Three or four usually works best.
Once a poll has more than five or six options, the votes tend to spread out, making it harder for any option to stand out as a clear winner.
Keep the option names short and easy to understand. Even someone who knows nothing about the topic should be able to read the choices and decide in just a couple of seconds.
Yes, but only until 10 people have taken part, counting anyone who later withdrew.
Before then you can fix a typo, reword the question, add, rename or remove options, or delete the poll completely. The voting rules (Pulse or One answer, the time to withdraw, a prediction’s cutoff) are fixed from the first answer; a withdrawal or later version does not unlock them.
If nobody has answered, your edit updates the poll in place. If anyone has answered, their version and results are preserved under Previous results and the updated poll opens at zero so everyone can answer it.
There is one safe Save action. You do not have to decide whether old answers still match changed content, and the edit never deletes those answers.
Once 10 people have taken part, the question, context and existing options are permanent. You can still add a new option, close the poll, change its category or visibility, and turn comments or the voter list on or off.
That’s why it’s worth reading your poll one more time before you share it.
They are never deleted by the current versioned edit flow.
If someone already answered, saving a changed question, context or option set with Edit archives that version and its results. The updated poll opens as a new unanswered version, and everyone can answer again. Adding an option with Add an option is different: it starts at zero and everyone keeps their answer.
Earlier results remain available under Previous results. This keeps the original wording and answers together instead of making an old answer appear to belong to a new question.
Yes, while the poll is still open, up to twenty options in total. That includes after 10 people have taken part: the question, context and existing options are permanent from then on, but you can still add a new option.
A new option starts at zero from today. Everyone keeps their answer, and the trend shows the new option from the moment it joins.
Voters can also suggest an option for you to approve.
Yes.
When creating your poll, turn on Timed and choose the date and time you want voting to end.
At that moment, the poll automatically closes, voting stops, and the final results become visible to everyone who can open the poll.
The poll itself isn’t deleted. It stays online as a permanent record, complete with its results and history.
Timed polls are useful for questions with a natural deadline, such as sporting events, award shows, product launches, or election results.
Yes, with one thing to know about links.
Every poll starts Public. From the poll’s menu you can change that whenever you like, even after it has collected a lot of votes:
Public. Anyone can find it through the feed, search or your profile.
Unlisted. It doesn’t appear in the feed, in search or on your profile, but anyone who has the link can open it and vote, including anyone the link gets forwarded to.
Private. Only you can see it.
For a group conversation, Unlisted is usually the right choice. Just remember that a link can travel further than the group.
Yes.
You can disable comments either when creating the poll or later from the poll’s menu.
Comments are turned on by default. People can reply once to another comment, react to comments that have already been posted, and mention someone with @ so they get an alert.
If you expect a topic to become argumentative or abusive, turning comments off can help keep the discussion focused.
Anyone can read comments, but writing one requires an account.
It depends on how different your question is.
If your wording genuinely offers a different perspective, go ahead and create your poll.
If it’s essentially the same question, it’s usually better to vote on the existing poll instead. One poll with 4,000 votes tells a stronger story than two similar polls with 2,000 votes each.
Either way, the decision is yours. We’ll show you similar polls before you publish, but we never stop you from posting your own.
An optional note of up to 500 characters that appears under the question.
Use it for the background a stranger needs: which match, which film, what just happened. It shows on the poll page and on the poll’s card in the feed.
It isn’t searched, so put the words people would search for in the question itself. Like the question and options, it becomes permanent once 10 people have taken part, including anyone who withdraws.
Yes.
Your profile includes a creator dashboard where you can see how your polls are performing.
It shows information such as total votes, shares, comments, reposts, and which of your polls is performing best.
Only you can see these creator statistics.
It depends on whether you have an account. The Privacy Policy has the full list; this is the short one.
If you don’t sign in: a random ID that your browser or the app keeps on that device, so we can remember your votes there. A hash of your internet address mixed with a secret salt, to slow down vote abuse. It is a pseudonymous identifier, not a guarantee of anonymity. Your real address is never stored. And your country, state and city, worked out from your connection.
If you do sign in: your email address, a one-way hash of your password if you sign in with one, your handle, your display name and bio if you add them, a profile photo if you add one, your date of birth (used to check you’re 18 and to group results by age band, and never shown to anyone), your gender if you gave it, and your settings.
In both cases: we record how you use the app. Taps, which polls you open and for how long, what you search for, votes, comments and the rest. Usage records are deleted after 180 days. Search text is kept as you typed it for up to 180 days and then deleted; after that we keep only a daily count of how many searches there were and how many found nothing, with no search text and nothing that identifies you. Until then it is stored exactly as typed, so don’t type anything personal into search.
No.
OpinionSphere doesn’t use third-party tracking companies, and we never sell your personal information.
Even the usage data we collect stays in our own database.
If we introduce ways to earn money in the future, we’ll explain what changes here before it happens.
Two ways: with Google, or with an email address and a password. Both work on the website and in the Android app.
Signing in with Google takes one tap, and we never see your Google password.
If you choose an email address and a password, we first send you an email to confirm the address. We store only a one-way hash of your password, never the password itself, and if you forget it you can reset it by email.
Remember, you don’t need an account to browse polls or vote. Signing in is only required for features like creating polls, commenting, and syncing your activity across devices.
Only a small amount of information is public.
Other people can see your handle, your display name and bio if you’ve added them, your profile photo if you’ve added one, a poll you’ve pinned, the public polls you’ve created, and polls you’ve reposted.
Your votes remain private unless you turn on “Show my handle in voter lists.”
Even then, your name only appears on polls where the creator has also enabled voter lists. Both settings must be turned on before your name is shown.
To check you’re 18 or over, and to group results by age band.
We choose not to offer this experience to children because the app records how you use it in detail. Our rule is 18 or over, so we ask everyone who signs in. If the date says you’re under 18, the account is closed and the date isn’t kept.
Your date of birth is never shown to anyone. We use it for the age check and, in future, to show how different age groups answered a poll, and only where enough people in each group have voted that nobody can be picked out. Gender is optional. You can skip it or answer “prefer not to say”, and change it later.
Yes, from your profile, once you’re signed in.
Choose a picture and position it in the circle. We keep the picture you chose so you can move the circle later without uploading it again, and we strip the camera details from it, like where and when it was taken. The photo is public: it appears next to your handle everywhere your handle appears.
Every photo goes through an automated check before it’s stored. If the check refuses it, it isn’t saved; pick a different one. If the check can’t be reached at that moment, the photo is shown and checked again shortly afterwards, and removed if that check fails. You can remove the photo yourself at any time.
Their polls disappear from your feed, and neither of you can mention the other in a comment.
They aren’t told. You can see who you’ve blocked, and unblock them, in Settings.
Yes, yourself, in a minute.
Open Settings and choose “Delete account”, on the website or in the Android app, or go to opinionsphere.app/delete-account. It asks you one thing: whether to remove your comments as well.
Straight away, your profile stops being shown, every device is signed out and notifications stop. You then have 30 days to change your mind: sign in and choose Restore, and the account comes back as it was. Until then it can’t vote, comment or change anything.
After 30 days the deletion is final. Your email, handle, display name, bio, photo, date of birth and gender are removed, the link between your answers on different polls is removed, and your handle is held back from new accounts for 90 days. Backup copies can still contain that data for up to 90 days after it is erased; they expire on their own, and we never restore one to bring an account back.
Your polls and votes stay, without your name, because other people’s results depend on them. Your public profile details are removed, but retained activity still refers to your account ID and some records keep device identifiers. Text you wrote may also identify you. The Privacy Policy lists exactly what goes and what stays.
If you’d rather ask us, email from the address on the account and we’ll do it for you.
You’ll only receive notifications about activity that’s relevant to you.
That includes things like a poll you voted in getting a new leading option, a timed poll you voted in being about to close, someone adding a new option to a poll you follow, someone mentioning you in a comment, or someone commenting on or reposting a poll you created.
The most useful notification is when a poll you voted in changes direction. Finding out that opinion has shifted is one of the main reasons to come back to OpinionSphere.
Each kind of alert has its own switch in Settings, so you can keep the ones you want.
Yes.
After you vote, the website or the app may ask whether you’d like notifications for that poll.
If you allow them, they’re sent to that device without any account.
Creating an account adds a few extra benefits: an Alerts tab inside the app, notifications that follow you across devices, alerts for polls you’ve created yourself, and a switch for each kind of alert.
We keep notifications to a minimum.
You’ll receive a notification when something meaningful happens in a poll you’ve interacted with, such as a change in the leading option.
In addition, we may send up to two short recommendations a day suggesting polls you might find interesting, and a reminder when you’ve been away for a while and a poll has moved in the meantime.
If there’s nothing useful to tell you, we won’t send anything. And if you decide you don’t want notifications anymore, you can turn them off at any time.
Not yet.
We’ve built a weekly summary email, covering polls you created, polls you voted in and how your predictions did. But the site isn’t connected to a mail service yet, so nothing is being sent.
When it’s switched on, it’ll go out once a week, only to accounts, and the switch to stop it is already in Settings. Until then, the only thing that reaches you is a notification, and only if you allowed them.
Signing in doesn’t use email either. It’s Google.
The steps depend on where you are.
On the website, signed in: open Settings (opinionsphere.app/settings). Under Notifications there’s a switch for each kind of alert, and the Alerts tab has a switch for notifications on the device you’re using.
In the Android app: open Settings and then Notifications for the same per-kind switches, or turn off notifications for OpinionSphere in your phone’s system settings.
Without an account: turn off notifications for opinionsphere.app in your browser settings. For example, in Chrome on Android, tap the lock (or ⓘ) icon beside the address bar and open Notifications to manage them.
There’s an Android app on Google Play, at play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.opinionsphere.
There’s no iPhone app.
You don’t need the app to use OpinionSphere. The website works on any phone, and if you’d like it to feel like an app, open your browser menu and choose “Add to Home Screen”. An icon appears on your home screen, and the site opens full-screen.
Whether you install anything or not, you get the same polls and the same notifications.
OpinionSphere searches by meaning, not just by exact words.
For example, searching for “batsman” can still find a poll about the greatest batter, even if the word batsman doesn’t appear anywhere in the question.
Search can also find polls where a player appears as an option rather than in the title.
You can also search for people by entering their handle.
Mostly not.
Reading polls, comments and results needs a connection, on the website and in the app.
On the website, a vote made while you’re offline fails, and you vote again once you’re connected.
In the Android app, a vote that can’t be sent is kept on your phone and the app retries it when you have a connection. A queued vote isn’t counted until our server accepts it, and the server can still refuse it then, for example if the poll closed in the meantime.
The app interface is currently available in English.
However, you can create polls in any language. Your question and options will appear exactly as you write them.
Only the menus, buttons, and other parts of the app itself are limited to English for now.
Usually because your sign-in expired, or because the account was signed out on another device or closed.
On the website, a sign-in lasts 30 days. In the Android app, it renews itself in the background for up to 90 days of use.
If the renewal fails, the app keeps working for reading and asks you to sign in again the next time you do something that needs an account, like commenting or creating a poll. Signing in again with Google puts everything back.
Every poll and every comment has a Report option.
When you report something, we’ll ask you why you’re reporting it. To report a profile or a profile photo, use the Feedback button or email us.
Reports are reviewed by a real person, and content isn’t removed just because someone disagrees with it or dislikes it. The one exception is profile photos: an automated check can refuse or remove a photo on its own, and you can contest that by email.
Please report anything that’s abusive, clearly false, or targeted at a private individual.
Use the Feedback button in the menu.
You don’t need an account, and even a single sentence is enough for us to understand the problem.
Bugs aren’t the only thing we want to hear about. If something was confusing, difficult to use, or simply didn’t make sense, we’d like to know that too. Your feedback helps us make OpinionSphere better for everyone.
There are two longer reads below. And if your question isn’t on this page, send it to us with the feedback button in the menu. One line is enough and you don’t need an account. This page is written from what people actually ask us.
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