Facebook Launches Gross National Happiness Index

Posted by: ravi | Oct-5-2009 | File Under: Articles, News, Science


Facebook just launched a gross national happiness index which uses analysis of words used in Facebook posts to measure the country’s mood.  I’m sure those who study the taxonomy of emotion would love to see more complex measures included.  However, this is a potentially wonderful tool and the fact that Facebook is willing to publish this data means that someday they could end up allowing the research community to examine their data.  The possibilities are endless.

 Some interesting trends from their limited graph….

Thanksgiving is the happiest day of the year (or the day we all feel we have to say something positive…:)).

 Why is the day after Father’s day the least positive day (they have separate indexes for positivity and negativity)?

Why is the 4th of July the  least negative day?

 Click here to view the index 

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