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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?"

3 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. skeptical by caffeinemessiah · · Score: 1, Redundant
    I am highly skeptical about this. Opinion extraction in general is a difficult area of data mining with enough problems in areas as (relatively) well defined as Amazon reviews, etc. To try to measure the general mood of the "blogosphere" with any measure of accuracy is useless at best. And just how are you supposed to even roughly verify the "mood" for arbitrary ideas?? Random human sampling and verification just won't cut it...

    Companies might be better off using a magic 8 ball...

    --
    An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
  2. My mood? by VTMarik · · Score: 0, Redundant

    VTMarik is a sad panda. BOMB THE BLOGOSPHERE! /QC Rocks! //Fark sig out!

  3. Re:Been there, done that. by Gyga · · Score: 0, Redundant

    It can't be done or else Data would have done it before he got his emotion chip.

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    I don't preview or spellcheck.