Politix Unveils New Features; Introduces New Ways for Citizens to Interact With and Respond to Day’s Political News

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--On the heels of significant user and traffic growth, Politix (politix.topix.com), a bipartisan political news and discussion site where Americans can vote on issues and interact with the news, has added several new features to its online site and mobile app. The new features, which include mini-polls, quizzes and an Elected Officials database, provide Politix users with even more ways to engage in political discussions on an ongoing basis.

“What makes Politix unique is not only that our user base is engaged and politically active but also that it’s evenly divided among political parties with roughly a third of users calling themselves Democrat, Republican and independent respectively”

Since launching its mobile site in March 2012 and mobile apps in May 2012, Politix has found its footing with a strong community of users that regularly visit the site to talk about what's going on in politics and debate the issues. Over the last six months, Politix has had three million unique visitors and has posted over 2,750 articles, with users leaving over 130,000 comments in response to the questions embedded in Politix articles. What’s more, since posting 225 debate maps, Politix has had more than 55,000 votes cast. These numbers spiked on Election Day when Politix experienced its highest traffic, sign-ups and site interactions to date.

“What makes Politix unique is not only that our user base is engaged and politically active but also that it’s evenly divided among political parties with roughly a third of users calling themselves Democrat, Republican and independent respectively,” said David Mark, editor in chief of Politix. “This tells us that there is a need, which Politix is meeting, for a place where people of varying beliefs can come together to debate the issues, share viewpoints with their friends, family, neighbors and fellow citizens and respond to the political news of the day.”

Politix’s new features include a desktop re-design that better highlights the news stream and includes a featured item of the day. Mini-polls now embedded in articles, and Quizzes are also new to Politix. Mini-polls give users a way to weigh in on the day’s political issues in a matter of seconds. Quizzes also enable engagement on the go and are designed let users test their knowledge of various political subjects and share the results on Facebook and Twitter.

Politix’s new Elected Officials feature enables users to explore a map of the United States to see elected officials at the State and District levels. Users can customize their profile by entering their zip code and automatically see a view of their elected officials.

“Information is power and Politix is bringing this power to everyday citizens, giving them the opportunity to be a part of the political process on each and every day and educate themselves, and their friends, about the issues that matter most to them,” added Mark.

About Topix

Topix is the largest local forum site in the United States, aggregating news and hosting conversation for over twenty thousand cities and towns to over ten million people a month. A Top 10 online newspaper destination (comScore, July 2011), Topix is also the third largest local mobile site (Quantcast, February 2012). Based in Palo Alto, Calif., Topix LLC is a privately held company with investment from Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI) and Tribune Company. For more, visit www.topix.com.