The Toluna UK Official Blog

For several days, our IT team has been trying to resolve the problem regarding the points awarded for the Content Popularity Bonus. We are pleased to say that we have now found a solution!

For you, the active members on the site, this means that all the points you were missing have now been credited. You can find all the details of the crediting on your account, in the “Your Points” section

As usual, the opinions  bonus (for opinions over 80 words) will be credited on the 2^nd of the next month.

See you soon on the site!

When you enter your poll question or topic title, a list of related polls or opinion topics is automatically displayed on the right side of the page:

In this example the poll question is “Who will win the league cup this year”. As you can see, the system has generated a list of related polls and has even found an exact match for this question.

Reviewing the related content list it is a great way to discover polls and opinion topics that could be of interest to you. After all, if you took the time to create a football related poll, it should be safe to assume that football is a passion of yours; why not make your voice heard on the subject?

An equally important reason to review the related content is that members of the community tend to get weary of answering the same poll questions or replying to the same opinion topics. If your poll or opinion topic already exist on the site, members who already replied are likely to skip yours; this means you will have fewer votes or opinions, which in turn means you will also earn fewer content popularity points with Social Rewards.

See you on the site,

Avner & the Toluna Team

As many of you have noticed, there have been problems accessing the sponsored polls over the past few days, and some of the content popularity bonuses for polls and topics were not awarded as well.

Some of you encountered an error message when attempting to access the sponsored polls; this happened simply because you had already answered all of the sponsored polls available at the time. In addition, there have been delays in crediting the sponsored polls; rest assured that we are doing our best to get to the bottom of this problem as quickly as possible.

Another problem has to do with the content popularity bonuses (for more info on Toluna’s Social Rewards please visit our Tutorial). This problem has been resolved but unfortunately, due to technical restrictions, we are unable to retroactively award these points. We apologize for this and would like to once again express our appreciation for the time and effort our members put into creating and responding to polls and opinion topics; we will do everything in our power to ensure this does not happen again.

See you on the site,

Avner & the Toluna Team

Categorizing and tagging your polls and opinion topics is an important part of the content creation process; we’d like to offer some tips and advice and stress the importance of properly categorizing and tagging your Toluna content:

1. Try to be as precise as possible when selecting a category and sub-category. This will allow other members to find your content with greater ease, and will ensure that your content has a higher response rate. Another important thing to remember is that content that has not been properly categorized is subject to deletion for the exact same reason; improperly categorized content may have a negative effect on search results and may show up in the wrong places when other members browse content by categories.
2. While tagging isn’t a mandatory step, it is highly recommended you add a few tags to each poll or opinion topic you create. Tags are much more flexible and precise than categories; for example, if you’re writing a review about the latest Dr. Who special you can tag it as such and not limit yourself to simply categorizing it as TV / Science Fiction. Once again, this can have a major positive impact on how many members will find and respond to your content.
3. When in doubt, use the “Other” category. If you’ve created a poll or opinion topic that does not accurately fit any of the categories, simply use the “Other” category. In such cases it is even more important that you enter as many tags as possible in order to make it easier for other members to find your content. Please note that each category contains an “Other” sub-category; so if you’re writing a review of a movie you recently saw but cannot find the exact genre for it, simply categorize it as Films & Cinema / Other. And did we mention the importance of using tags yet…?

See you on the site,

Avner & the Toluna Team

We are happy to announce the addition of Love2Shop vouchers to our growing list of reward partners!

Convert 60,000 Toluna points and receive £12 worth of Love2shop gift vouchers, the UK’s most popular multi-option gift voucher! Vouchers can be used at a wide variety of retailers ranging from fashion & footwear to food & drink, including House of Fraser, Boots, Iceland, Comet and HMV. For a full list of the stores that accept Love2Shop vouchers please click here.

See you on the site,

Avner & the Toluna Team

Netiquette is described by Wikipedia as “…a set of social conventions that facilitate interaction over networks, ranging from Usenet and mailing lists to blogs and forums.“

In other words, Netiquette consists of a series of rules and regulations designed to facilitate a friendly and polite internet environment. Since the internet itself is in constant flux and constantly growing in both size and technological abilities, the rules of Netiqutte need to be modified and updated as well. But one rule has remained a constant:

“… Avoid typing in ALL CAPS, which is considered to be the equivalent of shouting or yelling.”

So here is our gentle plea to the Toluna community- please make sure that your polls, topics and opinions are not written entirely in upper case (capital letters). We would also like to take this opportunity to remind you about Toluna’s moderation rules, which can also be found on the Tutorial:

• Polls, topics and opinions written entirely in upper case characters are subject to deletion.
• Polls and topics that were not properly categorized may be subject to deletion.
• Polls and topics written in one language but marked as another, as well as opinions written in the wrong language (for example, a Spanish opinion on an English topic) are subject to deletion.

See you on the site,

Avner & the Toluna Team

Over the past few days, Toluna has suffered from a variety of performance issues, most notably speed related and topic creation issues. Our technical staff have been working around the clock to resolve these issues and you should be seeing major improvements in overall site behavior. 

These recent problems are due to an increased number of Toluna members and increases to the amount of polls and topics created; we are working extra hard to keep up with the increased site traffic, and we apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you.

See you on the site,

Avner & the Toluna Team