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How does the world feel... right now?
Over at We Feel Fine they're doing some really cool stuff with tracking how Twitter, Facebook and blogs show how people all over the world are feeling at the moment.
Click on the "Interactive Version" in the bottom left, and you'll be able to see how the general mood of the world ebbs and flows-- sometimes everybody else is chuffed, or sometimes you're not the only one who's feeling down.
In fact, they found that some days are very 'happy' days, and others have been very much the opposite. In looking at results in the US, they found:
- The consistently happiest days are, not surprisingly, vacation days and holidays. The overall happiest days of the last few years were election day (Nov. 4) and President Obama's inauguration (Jan. 20). On these days, people typically typed sentences with words like "pride" and "proud."
- Some of the saddest days over the last few years have been the anniversaries of 9-11 and even the day before that solemn anniversary, Sept. 10. Michael Jackson's recent death also caused a drop in the average national happiness. (via)
What's really cool about this is the interactive site where you can see people all over the world expressing how they feel at this very moment, and also what is the most-expressed feeling right now..
Click on any individual bubble, and see what someone said:
You can change how you view the data as graphs, lists, lumpy blobs, or scattered free-form dots:
It would be great if there were something similar to analyse how our own status reflect our own feelings-- a bit like the recent Facebook "Year in Status updates" app, but across all platforms. Then you could compare it to how everybody else is feeling.
Do you use any app or service to track how you feel, or would you like to know how you're feelings compare to the mood of everybody else?
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Ianb
8 months ago
Reply ReportVery cool Vince.
I read a blog at Facebook about trying to measure and graph what they called the "gross national happiness" which appears to spike around holidays.
On the one hand, your status updates probably do reflect how you feel. But on the other hand, it might not correlate all that much.
Somebody might be keeping up a very 'happy' social media appearance, but actually not be very happy at all. I've certainly had friends who post lots of happy pix and funny updates, and don't let on that they're having a tough time.
anna
8 months ago
Reply Reportreally interesting Vince.
have you also heard of the Gross National Happiness work work being done in Bhutan? As far as I know they're not digitally tracking happiness as such right now, but still pretty encouraging :)
I agree with Ianb that there seems to be a tendency on FB to record the good in status updates - I definitely self-censor to an extent, but I know some people are brutally honest + open... would be interesting to know what proportion of people really reflect their feelings openly in blogging / microblogging.