Case Study
Filestack Allows Wedgies To Upload Images From URLs For Social Media Polls
For 2 years, Wedgies has been the best way to do real-time polls across social media.
“Wedgies” are polls you can ask and share across multiple channels to receive feedback in real-time. Wedgies powers simple polling and surveys on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, web pages, blog posts, and live broadcasts.
It’s grown from just being an idea, to raising money, to being a successful business that’s getting a lot of traction. Wedgies has millions of people voting on its polls every month. They also work with large media organizations, like The Weather Channel, Engadget, The Next Web and CrunchBase, which regularly use Wedgies polls in their articles.
Wedgies Needed Filestack To Locate Images Around The Net To Vote On
The Wedgies team knew that they wanted to allow users to upload photos and animated GIFs to be able to vote on them. At first, they evaluated building an application themselves, but ended up exploring a couple options. They were aware of some but were looking for alternatives.
A software developer by trade, Jimmy Jacobson, Co-founder and CTO of wedgies.com had come across Filestack when we sponsored 500 Startups. When the Wedgies team looked at Filestack, they liked the documentation and API.
“What really made us go with Filestack was not just the great features you guys have, but also the quality of your documentation for developers,” explains Jimmy. “It was super clean, clear and easy to follow. It was much easier to get up and running with Filestack than it was with your competitors.”
Wedgies Users Like Filestack’s URL Option For Adding Images To Their Polls
When it comes to using Filestack, there’s one thing that made it stand out for the Wedgies team and that differentiated it from the rest. Filestack makes our app easy-to-use with its URL upload tool.
“The feature we like – and that our users really like about Filestack – is the ability to upload pictures from different sources, not just their own hard drive,” says Jimmy Jacobson. “We know that our customers really like using the URL option for adding images to their polls, because it means they don’t have to download that picture to their own hard drive first.”
A software developer by trade, Jimmy Jacobson, Co-founder and CTO of wedgies.com had come across Filestack when we sponsored 500 Startups. When the Wedgies team looked at Filestack, they liked the documentation and API.
“What really made us go with Filestack was not just the great features you guys have, but also the quality of your documentation for developers,” explains Jimmy. “It was super clean, clear and easy to follow. It was much easier to get up and running with Filestack than it was with your competitors.”
“People don’t just keep their images on their hard drive anymore. They keep them on Facebook, Instagram, Giphy and all those other places.”
– Jimmy Jacobson, founder & CTO of wedgies.com
Filestack Helps the Internet Vote For A White And Gold Dress—Or, Is It Blue And Black?
For Wedgies development-wise, the core competency of Filestack is not simple image uploading or file uploading. The fact that the Filestack team already thought of the different integrations where people keep their images saves Wedgies development time.
≴I would say that Filestack is the easiest way to let your users upload content to your service,” adds Jimmy Jacobson. “People don’t just keep their images on their hard drive anymore. They keep them on Facebook, Instagram, Giphy and all those other places. So, it makes it easier for our users to connect all their different social media sources to find images to use in their polls.”
Wedgies allows questions to be shared over social media, or embedded on blog posts in a way that’s really engaging for audiences to interact with—thanks to Filestack.
“A great Filestack example is Wedgies had the black and blue dress uploaded multiple times. Wedgies users ran multiple polls asking if people think the dress is white and gold, or blue and black,” explains Jimmy Jacobson. “The Internet really seems to come down on the side of white and gold on that question.”