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Software Tracks Blogosphere Mood Swings

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the manic-depressive dept.

holy_calamity writes "Dutch researchers have figured out a way to measure the mood swings of the blogosphere. It can pick up peaks of flirtiness from bloggers around Valentine's Day and drunkenness at weekends, the plan is to create a search engine that returns the prevailing mood in the blogosphere about a topic. Companies are already interested in using it to track consumer confidence. What's the mood of Slashdot on this one?"

7 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Been there, done that. by XorNand · · Score: 5, Interesting


    This is old news. Just blogs? Bah! Color me unimpressed. I've already harnessed the power of the Internet to track the mood of the entire planet: http://www.howisyourday.com/

    --
    Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
  2. Mixed Signals by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Great. Humans already have trouble interpreting the tone of electronic messages. On top of that, let's have some algorithm tack on the subtle clues so necessary for proper interpretation of human communication. After all, computers have already shown a bang-up track record dealing with Human languages.

    Cool project though. Hilarity will undoubtedly ensue.

  3. zerg by Lord+Omlette · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They did this for Livejournal. It would always, without fail, return "tired".

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    [o]_O
  4. Re:Reservation... by shawb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I understand your concerns, but information that you yourself put on a webpage should not be considered private. If you don't want personal information to get out, don't post it in a public forum. Besides, it doesn't sound like this particular piece of software is really collecting personal information; all it does is look for spikes in a particular mood tag, and then parses through the text in the publically readable text to find unusual words. If this helps companies figure out what products actually excite people, then they will come out with products that people actually like (if used properly.)

    As a company (and especially as an investor) I would, however, take any information gathered through such a technique with a grain of salt or two. It seems that it would be close to trivial for a company game the system and set up enough accounts or bribe enough bloggers to tip the scales one way or the other, essentially creating inter-corporate astroturphing.

    --
    I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
  5. and the mood on 4/20 by SecureTheNet · · Score: 2, Interesting

    According to their page, under "Which moods are hot?" they list "high"

    http://ilps.science.uva.nl/MoodViews/Moodgrapher/? high

    Notice the sudden spike in the "high" mood on 4/20? I thought that was interesting.

    --
    SecureThe.Net - Practical Resources for Securing Systems
  6. Been there, done that! - MoodTap.com by bennomatic · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Why didn't this story just point directly towards the Mood Tap web site?

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    The CB App. What's your 20?
  7. Moodgrapher by themusicgod1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    what, like Moodgrapher? I don't understand what's so new?

    --
    GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.