Valentines Day is a day for feelings. Have you ever wondered how people feel on Valentines Day compared to other days? Or, how people in their 50’s feel on this holiday compared to people in their 20’s. Perhaps you’ve wondered if people in Montana generally feel happier than people in Ohio. How do women in the United States feel on a rainy day compered to women in Europe on a rainy day? Which are the happiest cities in the world?
The creators of We Feel Fine developed a program that scans blogs every few minutes for sentences and photos with comments that contain the words “I feel” or “I am feeling”. Once found, the system saves the entire the sentence into its database and scans it to see if it fits into one of its 5,000 pre-identified feelings. If a valid feeling is found, the sentence is said to represent one person who feels that way. The data is then represented in interactive visual graphs showing feeling, age, gender, weather, location and date.
By the way, the folks at We Feel Fine discovered that on Valentine’s day, people feel “loved” and “lonely” more than on other days.
We Feel Fine is information art that grows and changes as we grow and change. Check it out… if you feel like it.
One Comment
I really like the display and unusual data visualization they’ve done. The montage setting lets you see images from entries about a certain emotion; the mounds setting gives you comparisons. Really interesting!