Pingstr: The New Social Micro-Poll App that Advises

A lot of people often have a lot of questions that require an immediate answer, especially when they are in a dilemma of sorts. It could be as simple as making up their mind about what color shirt or shoes to buy, or get information regarding a future rendezvous.

There are many apps that profess to help out, but the new social micro-polling app from Pingstr, which appears to have gained tremendous momentum within just a week of its soft launch, claims to be different.

The brainchild of Parag Patel, a Yale and UCLA law graduate, and Malik Magdon-Ismail, also a Yale graduate, Pingstr was an offshoot of an attempt to find an extremely easy and fun way to poll friends with all sorts of questions and find out their opinions quickly and easily.

The only thing that has to be ready-made is the group of select friends to whom anyone in the group can send a ping, which is a combination of a photo and a question poll. As soon as the others in the group receive the alert, they can respond with just a couple of taps on their smartphones. The results are available in a few seconds. By posting the ping on their Facebook (News - Alert) accounts, more people will respond.

But the best part is that members of the group can respond regardless of whether or not they have downloaded the Pingstr app.

"We came up with Pingstr because we got tired of hitting 'reply all' and scrolling up and down a long e-mail to figure out who wanted what," said co-founder Ismail, who is currently a tenured computer science professional at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY.

Both Patel and Ismail believe that the early adopters will be students. However, with the addition of PingstrPics, pings that let utility-seeking users get answers without the need for a photograph, they are hoping to rope in parents and grandparents, too.

Pinging with the Pingstr app is said to be faster and more fun than texting or calling. The app is currently available on iPhones, Android (News - Alert) phones, Windows phones, Facebook and on the Pingstr website.