Is it possible to measure people’s levels of happiness based on the online data they produce? The team behind Hedonometer thinks so. Conceived by Peter Dodds and Chris Danforth at the University of Vermont’s Computational Story Lab, the software powering the platform, which recently went live, not only measures human happiness but does it in real time, too.
To perform the task, the Hedonometer uses people’s online expressions on social media, certainly a rich terrain from which to glean emotional material (and a similar approach to that taken by the team behind We Feel Fine). For the first version of the platform, Hedonometer is using Twitter as a source, but its designers say they can expand to any data source. For now, English is the only language used, but they will be adding a dozen other languages in the near future, as well as an API.
via Gizmag
