We are lucky to get to work on so many cool things with our partners. This year, we had a chance to team up with Mashable, one of our favorite sites, to create an interactive poll to find out how their readers pronounce different tech terms. Here’s a peek at the project.
Stephanie Buck, Features Editor at Mashable:
“When people couldn’t stop debating GIF vs. JIF, we knew we had to highlight other tech terms people argue about. It’s all good-hearted debate, but someone’s gotta be right. C5 had all the tools in-house that we needed to execute the project: the advanced design infrastructure and the smart data analysis. Mashable provided the publishing platform, audience feedback, and a hefty social audience. Perfect match.”
The Project
We chose six divisive tech terms to create an interactive poll around. Readers could click on each term to hear the different pronunciations, then choose their preferred one. We also collected demographic data to see what insights we might find after we reviewed the results.
See the results here.
Once we had the data, we combed through to see how each tech term stacked up, looking at how age, geography, or other factors might influence the results. We then turned those data insights into mini infographics to support Mashable’s follow-up article.
Sample mini graphics showcase what we found out about how respondents pronounce each term. 
Asher Rumack, Column Five Producer:
“The really fun thing about the concept is that as a society we aren’t really taught how to say these words in school or at home. We see them on our screen one day and our mind decides how to say them, right or wrong. So you don’t get the same regional/cultural dialect breakdowns in the tech sphere that you get with other colloquial sayings like “y’all,” for example. It’s nice to see, judging from the passionate social conversations happening around our results, that we added substance (and some fire) to the discussion.”
The Results
The poll and mini graphics were a huge success, with worldwide participation from Mashable readers:
- 30,000+ responses from 191 countries
- 7,000+ social shares for the poll
- 10,000+ shares for the follow-up article
Most importantly, though, we were able to put some of the debate to rest—whether or not everyone was satisfied with the results.
Stephanie: “To be honest, I was disappointed to see that 70% of people believe it’s pronounced ‘GIF’ with a hard ‘G.’ Clearly, they’re wrong. Otherwise, I loved learning which countries and age groups pronounce things differently, based on language, education, culture, etc.”
Asher: “People obviously feel strongly about how their personal decisions weighed into the overall results—if only we could have reaction GIFs for everyone’s faces as they saw the breakdowns! And for the record, it’s GIF with a hard ‘G’ in my opinion.”
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