Bing.com and FOX News Channel team up to bring real-time polling to the State of the Union

Opportunity for Americans to share their views by "voting" on President Obama's address and the Republican response; Bing Pulse received 12.9 million votes during the 2013 State of the Union, making it the largest live online poll in history; new features include an annotated graph allowing users to see what passages are soaring and tanking, and poll questions about key topics in the speeches.

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Microsoft Corp.

Jan 27, 2014, 06:01 ET

REDMOND, Wash., Jan. 27, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Bing.com and FOX News Channel (FNC) are teaming up again on the Bing Pulse online voting tool for the State of the Union address and Republican response on Tuesday, Jan. 28, at 9 p.m. EST. The first-of-its-kind technology, which was introduced during the 2013 State of the Union, enables viewers to track and share their opinions and reactions in real time via their smartphone, PC or tablet. For the 2013 State of the Union, the Bing Pulse received 12.9 million votes during the address. Live results were also shown on FNC.

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During the address and the response, people will be able to not only provide their feedback, but also look at the Bing Pulse online or on FNC to see what other viewers think of both the speech and the Republican response in real time as the remarks are being delivered. The Bing Pulse also provides an intensity score, which highlights the key moments of the address or when the greatest numbers of viewers vote at the same time. New this year is an online annotated graphing feature that enables people with one click to understand exactly what was said during those polling spikes. Also new this year are poll questions about some of the key topics in the speeches.

"We deployed the Bing Pulse for the 2013 State of the Union because we thought it was the perfect tool to give people an opportunity to react in real time to the address," said Mark Penn, executive vice president of Advertising and Strategy at Microsoft. "Over the course of 59 minutes, we conducted the largest live online poll in history with 12.9 million votes registered. That response showed how much people want to make their voices heard during significant political moments. This year, we're adding more features and are covering the Republican response as well."

In addition to teaming up with FNC for its State of the Union coverage, the Bing Pulse runs three nights a week on "Special Report with Bret Baier" (6 p.m. EST). According to Nielsen, "Special Report" delivers on average 2.2 million viewers a night with Bing Pulse drawing over half a million votes per week.

How it works

The Bing Pulse allows people to share their opinion of the State of the Union by "voting" every five seconds on their reactions to the content of the speech. Viewers simply go to Bing.com/politics from a computer, tablet or mobile device to connect with the poll while watching the president's address or Republican response on television or through a live feed on the Bing.com/politics hub.

Unlike typical polls, Bing Pulse allows people to self-identify by gender and political party affiliation to provide additional aggregate data analysis to the results shown online and on FNC.

As the speeches progress, viewers have five choices to characterize how they are feeling about what they are hearing: strongly agree, somewhat agree, neutral, somewhat disagree and strongly disagree. The live count of the number of "pulses," or votes, becomes a line graph of how users react to the State of the Union, as well as the Republican response throughout both speeches, and will be visible on the television screen on FNC. Viewers watching the speech on other networks can have a robust State of the Union companion experience by participating in the Bing Pulse and seeing the live poll results online. During the course of the speeches, the Bing Pulse online poll results will be updated every few seconds on FNC with data also available at Bing.com/politics. More in-depth news and analysis will be available at http://www.foxnews.com/sotu.

Comprehensive, nonpartisan State of the Union experience

The Bing Pulse is part of a comprehensive, nonpartisan State of the Union experience on Bing.com/politics and on FNC. In addition to the Bing Pulse, the site provides a single destination for up-to-the-minute political news, expert information and real-time conversations on major policy issues. Bing.com/politics features include these:

A live feed of President Obama's State of the Union address and the Republican response
An annotated graph allowing users to see what parts of the State of the Union are soaring and what parts are tanking
Real-time news results using the Bing news filter that helps people navigate the news by filtering coverage from left-leaning and right-leaning sources
A live feed of social conversations on Twitter so people can stay informed on what leading political pundits are saying about the speech

About Bing

Bing is the search engine from Microsoft. It was introduced in 2009 with a mission to empower people with knowledge — to answer any question and provide useful tools to help you best accomplish your goals, from the everyday to the extraordinary. Bing continues on that mission today by moving beyond the search box to power intelligent experiences across a range of devices and services from Microsoft and third parties.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

SOURCE Microsoft Corp.