Facebook has pulled its once-hyped polls feature, TechCrunch reported yesterday. Facebook’s polls - which TechCrunch once dubbed as “a dream product for marketers” – targeted users based on gender, age, location, or profile keyword. Those conducting the poll would then be charged per result. When it launched in June 2007, PRWeek considered the ways PR pros could use the polls. We found that a handful had already used Facebook’s polls to do quick market research for the under-40 crowd, and more had plans to do so. But since then, we haven’t heard much from the industry about using these polls.

I was wondering, did Facebook polls ultimately provide a PR function? If so, is there a comparable tool to take its place now?