The World Economic Forum at Davos last week proved to be an excellent showcase for how social media tools can be incorporated into real-world discussion to create all-important dialogue with stakeholders. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch reported on Facebook polls being used to bring real-time opinions from an audience of thousands into several key sessions:

“Zuckerberg arranged for Facebook polls to be conducted during twelve key sessions. In one poll, during a session called Advice to the US President on Competitiveness, Facebook users were asked if the stimulus package is on target. 120,000 responses were recorded in twenty minutes. 59% of respondents said “no,” 15% said “yes” and 26% said unsure.

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World Economic Forum officials I spoke with yesterday were delighted with the polls, clearly excited that they could bring in direct, real time feedback to the sessions.

Facebook polls can no longer be created by users, but Facebook continues to use the product directly. Perhaps their experience at Davos will convince them to re-open the product.”

Jeff Jarvis spent a fair bit of his time tweeting the #Davos experience, as did David Schlesinger, Reuters editor-in-chief, whose tweets caused a bit of a stir by scooping the Reuters news wire. Schlesinger has blogged in fascinating detail about the experience, saying:

“I have no idea what journalism will look like in five years except that it will be different than it is now. That’s a great thing, I believe.

I have little patience for those who cling to sentimental (and frankly inaccurate) memories of the good old halcyon days of journalism that were somehow purer and better than a world where tweets and blogs compete with news wires and newspapers.

Bring it on, I say!”

Elsewhere on the web:

The Telegraph reports that Facebook will open its database up to market research companies; AllFacebook gets confirmation that this is in fact entirely inaccurate.

Dom Sagolia tells the story of how Twitter was born.

Google created momentary panic for web users at the weekend, when they blacklisted the internet. Yes, all of it.

In case you missed it, it’s snowing in the UK.