Everything in this world is subject to evolution and just like the way people's opinions evolve regarding a particular subject over the years; in the same way the methods of collecting that opinion has also evolved and changed quite a lot over the period of last 50 years or so. Collection of information has always been important for people who participate in public life or for corporations who want to know about the usefulness of a product or service that they have sent to the market. In the early years the best way to collect that information was by using a question and for many decades it was possibly the best way of collecting primary data without the hassle of talking to the respondents directly and noting down the answers. The questionnaire itself consists of a list of questions that the respondents need to answer regarding a particular topic and once they have filled it up they need to hand it over to the concerned authorities. In most cases, the respondents could post it back to the concerned people since the postal charges used to be prepaid and once all the questionnaires were handed over, the analysis of the data could begin in earnest so that a conclusion could be reached regarding the particular topic.

The invention of the internet resulted in a paradigm shift in many walks of human life and none more so in the way in which data is collected as well as analyzed. Nowadays, one can collect opinions in a matter of minutes by sending an online survey directly to the e-mail inbox of the potential respondent and once that is filled up the respondent can send it back within seconds. In this way an online survey is extensively used nowadays to find out the opinion of the people who matter regarding anything that is important for individuals, political parties, corporations or even the government. If they are aware of the sentiments of the public then they would be in a position to work according to the desires of the public. On the other hand it also needs to be pointed out that in the earlier days it used to take a lot of time to completely analyze the date and come to a figure. However, that problem is no longer there since nowadays computers are used to do all the calculations and it has been found to be remarkably accurate.

On the other hand there are certain websites which have cropped up which conduct live online polls regarding any on Plenty of people nowadays have access to the internet and hence polls have now become an extremely popular way of expressing one's thoughts on a particular event. Moreover the results are updated every second, which allows the people to know what the people are thinking on a real time basis.