We’ve all been on that nightmare email chain. The 79-thread one where 15 of your college friends argue over Atlantic City or Vegas for a bachelorette party. Or the internal company email where each response includes a new “cc” recipient who has to weigh in. Or even the annual sibling email over what to get Dad for Christmas.

VoteIt makes the group decision process simple. You pose a question, you invite friends, they vote, they explain why they voted the way they did. It’s all socially integrated and it’s all open, clean and simple. (Here’s an example.)

It was conceived to solve small day-to-day group decisions like the ones I described. “We had this theory that decisions are social,” CEO Taylor Beery said. Reasonable enough. But since the company’s soft launch in private beta last Fall, VoteIt has been floored by the types of things users have put up to vote.

“We didn’t anticipate the breadth of ways people would use the product,” Beery said. Everything from dog names to neighborhood associations testing out opinions on new initiatives to companies deciding on new logos. (Beery actually tried to persuade his wife to put the name of their baby up to a vote. He was overruled–three month-old Walker’s name was ultimately decided “as a one-on-one decision,” Beery said.)

Today the New Orleans-based startup has quietly opened its platform from private beta.
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