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Twitter Says Americans Are Happier In the Morning
DWF3046 writes "There are lots of things you can infer from Twitter. But while we're learning what we're eating or where we're flying, we haven't been able to use Twitter to determine how we're feeling. Researchers at Harvard and Northwestern have created a video that shows the mood in the US, as inferred using over 300 million tweets, over the course of the day. The results? The early morning and late evening appear to provide the highest levels of happiness. Geographically, the data points to a significantly happier west coast, which is consistently three hours behind the east coast."
I'm happy all day long.
Now where's my grant money?
Because people are twitter shitters
Living With a Nerd
I'd hate to see them in the afternoon.
Louisiana, the Dakotas, and New York seem to be pretty unhappy all day long.
New Mexico, Mississippi, West VA and Montana are pissed of 24 hours a day.
Wonder why?
When was this taken? I would like to see this on a matrix with some current events...
How was mississippi/Loisiana before the oil spill?
Is New Mexico Jealous they didn't get an immigration law like arizona?
Is montana just sick of mountains?
I noticed that the flyover states are generally more angry than the coasts... What did they look like before obama care? Before Obama?
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Fuck twitter. I hate mornings.
Is not unexpected. A recent study showed that "morning people" were more successful and happy with their lot in life. Late risers were more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs, watch too much TV and masturbate.
Sorry to interrupt your regularly scheduled slashdot, but we have breaking news. Scientists at Twitter, Inc, have just published the shocking results from their study of the moods of their posters. They have some to the shocking conclusion that they do not like being at work. Stay with this station for more breaking news on this exciting topic!
oncemore the definition of morning is somewhat of a contested point. Talk to the happy admin at 5 am about how gleeful and chipper his workday began and im certain you'll earn a LART of epic proportion.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It took analyzing twitter data for them to find that the west coast, "is consistently three hours behind the east coast." And I thought they where starting to catch up.
I know I am happier after 7am CDT - since I work night shift and 7am is when I clock out.
I live on the East Coast but have noticed that I feel better the more west I go. I'm not sure what it is, something about the time zone shift I think.
Even just one time zone west feels tons better.
My theory is that it's because I feel better going to bed later and getting up later but having the sun in the normal position.
I don't know if the effect would last though. I haven't stayed in another time zone for more than a month or so. I would probably need to do it for at least a year or possibly two before I knew if the effect wears off.
Why are the states so disfigured in that video?
They are almost always green. Must be the nice weather, beaches, and a getting to see people in swim suits all day.
Dam just had mod points too but they are gone. This is pretty much what I was going to say. The closer to work the unhappier people are. Woulda gave ya one for insightful.
Of course we are happier in the morning. We haven't gone to work, had to deal with idiots, listened to the news tell us how everything sucks.
The best day is the day where one does not listen to the news, drive in rush hour traffic, or have to deal with one's boss or cow-irkers.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
They are unhappy all day long! And I thought it sucked to live in Cleveland...
It's that little bit in the middle where you're at work that just seems to crush your soul a little bit.
Twinstiq, game news
Coffee in the morning (wheee!) and alcohol in the evening (wheee!).
... or does this mean the people on the west coast are a lot more sarcastic?
No wonder to me why morning and night are the high points. Coffee and booze.
Michigan remains angry throughout the entire day.
If the west coast was inconsistently 3 hours behind the west coast we'd have bigger problems to worry about.
Maybe its more "in" to be positive on the west coast, and negative on the east coast.
I work with people from all over the US, and I would have 99% certainty that the people on the west coast are always more positive and better to work with than those on the east coast. Midwest people aren't so bad, but its really just a coin toss when it comes to the midwest or east coast.
I can pretty much count on people in california being in a good mood no matter what time of day.
Also to note is that if this is a "popular" thing to do, then the younger crowd is going to be more involved, so what does that say for our up and coming generation? As a gen X'er, i've been pretty scared by the notion that people that are 24 and younger couldn't live a day without their cell phone.
because usually it is in the morning I get laid.
I think this says more about twitter users than Americans. Twitter users are more likely to be quite happy with themselves - if you know what I mean - while those of us who are more modest and value our privacy and thus do not use twitter are omitted from the Twitter demographic. Silly study. Mornings generally suck. Night time is the right time.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
People who are online in the morning are going to work and stuff like that.
In the evenings, people are playing with their kids, spending time with loved ones, and having sex. And most people don't post on twitter every time they have an orgasm.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
An alternative explanation is that people are more sarcastic in the morning. Then toward the end of the day, they're too tired to keep it up.
...Duh. Tell me who didn't know this.
Wait. I don't want to know.
If you click follow the link to the university website, it is from researchers from Northeastern University not Northwestern University
...when idiots in America stop twittering.
If only they know the pain of being fired and sitting jobless at home they wouldn't be so unhappy to be at work.
Huh.
Either that or they'd tweet miserably about that, too.
It's interesting that Tennessee is much greener than average too. Utah and Deleware are other outliers. None of the unusually happy states seem to be surrounded by other unusually happy states.
I've lived in Tennessee and Northern California before. In CA the weather is amazing all year round. In TN the people are really nice and the cost of living is very low. At least those are the things I personally noticed.
I wish they had higher resolution data though. It would be interesting to see if particular cities or regions of larger states were pulling the rest of the state with them.
Also, two days worth of data isn't enough to draw many conclusions. Maybe the unhappy states had bad weather on those days and the happy ones had good weather? How do the seasons influence happiness?
Were the researchers at Twitter simply monitoring all of the posts or were they paying attention to who was posting. To say if a country, as a whole, was happier in the morning, they would need to monitor and compare the posts of the same people throughout the day. However if they simply monitor all of the posts, ignoring who is posting, and then find the average level of happiness, then all they can say is the posts sampled in the morning are more positive than those posted other days. They can't say Americans are happier, because not everyone posts will post throughout the day. Will you see most high school students that are home on summer break post at 6 AM? No. He/She will most likely be asleep. However, they will be up later. Similarly the people that get up at 5AM to prepare for work are less likely to post late night because they are asleep. If you aren't tracking individual users throughout the day, then you aren't saying Americans are happier during the day... you are saying people that post at time X have more positive tweets than those that post at time Y.
Life's just one big shit sandwich up here in the midwest.
It is Northeastern, not Northwestern :)
They must have left out Mondays.
That map looks like my liver in the morning.
I notice the unhappiest tweets are in "the middle of the night" and the happiest are around the time most people wake up (or about when they've finished eating dinner).
So... people who can't sleep for some reason make unhappy tweets? I wonder why? And people who have just awakened from a refreshing night's sleep are happy?
Hate to sound like one of those "this is so obvious" people, but this is so obvious.
Anyone else notice that the state of Mississippi was red for the entire video? Guess I'd be upset too if I had to live there...
It's weird that the west coast which is PST (GMT -8) would be 3 hours behind the east coast which is EST (GMT -5).