Techcrunch: Facebook Prototype Measures Gross National Happiness, Confirms That We Hate Mondays

Posted by on under gross national happiness, status updates, millis, dataset, prototype, citizens, developers, united states |

With over 300 million users and 40 million daily status updates, Facebook has an immense amount of data that could potentially be used to gauge any number of things, from the hottest up-and-coming bands to the most discussed political issues. Earlier this week some of the site's engineers decided to use this dataset to measure something a bit more fundamental: happiness. Dubbed Gross National Happiness, this new prototype application does its best to determine if Facebook users in the United States are happy or sad. Here's how the application's developers describe it:

...Grouped together, the status updates of millions of Facebook users from every demographic in the nation can work together to say something about how we as a nation are doing. Measuring how well-off, happy or satisfied with life the citizens of a nation are is part of the Gross National Happiness movement.

Tagi: gross national happiness, status updates, millis, dataset, prototype, citizens, developers, united states