As reported in TechCrunch Facebook just launched a new product tonight called Facebook Polls – look for a link in the bottom navigation area next to “Advertising” on any Facebook page.

This allows researchers access to the Facebook’s vast membership and enables them to be polled. The polls are not free – Facebook charges you a variable amount based on how quickly you want results. You tell Facebook how many results you want and how much you are wiling to pay per result. The more you offer, the more quickly results are returned to you. Prices currently range from $.10 to $1.00 per data point, plus an initial $5 insertion fee. Facebook will estimate the completion time for the poll based on how much you bid.

I would be worried if I was Smile City (125,000 members) whose raison d’etre for memebrs has been rewards with little focus on social networking. Watch this space and watch out for myspace and Bebo (with its estimated 800,000 NZ members) as it like Facebook hunts for increasing revenues. It is also arguable that the demographics of the social networking sites will be far more desirable than SmileCitys.