With PlanetOut's pending acquisition of the nation's largest gay magazines, The Advocate and Out, the merger means many of the most powerful gay media fall to a single owner. Despite some people's concerns about media concentration, Smith insists the merger will allow more voices to be heard because of the increased resources. As of 3 p.m. ET, more than 300,000 people from 225 locales, including Albania, Samoa and Montenegro, had responded to Planet Project, spearheaded by 3Com and underwritten by several other companies, including pollsters Harris Interactive. Anyone can take the poll online. Pollsters across the globe are conducting the poll offline to include the unwired.
Online participants can get instant results, sorted by age, race, sex and country.
That makes for fascinating comparisons, says Rick Smolan, director of the project. The poll is a work in progress, but Smolan says he's fascinated by some early results.