If I owned a Marketing Research Group, I might be a little concerned right now. Ask500people.com is a new site allowing users to pose questions to a global community. It's currently only in the beta stage, and is still fairly limited in that you can only receive simple yes or no responses; essentially making it more like a polling tool. But it works in real time and is pretty damn cool. DISCLAIMER: Currently, the majority of questions being polled appear fairly pedantic.
But imagine the potential if you could upload custom content and develop targeted inquiries based on participant profiles. ie. A movie studio could upload the trailer for an unreleased film, and get feedback from users who have indicated that they are "movie buffs". Or Kraft Foods could upload potential Macaroni box package designs and ask mom's which one's they'd be more likely to buy. Could be cool.
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