Dutch boffins monitor the 'mood' of the internet

MoodViews is a collection of instruments that maps the mood of bloggers as they write their messages

Dutch researchers have unveiled a program which they claim can trace and explain significant changes in mood patterns on the internet.

Boffins from the NWO Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research said that MoodViews is a collection of instruments that maps the mood of bloggers as they write their messages. 

The application was created as part of NWO's Computing with Meaning project to investigate how the subjective aspects of blogs, such as moods, play a role in determining which people look at and read the blogs.

The software was developed by Gilad Mishne, Krisztian Balog and Maarten de Rijke and follows the moods of two million bloggers from around the world. Each day the program picks up about 150,000 blog entries.

MoodViews has three components. Moodgrapher monitors the global mood of bloggers and converts the data into overview graphs.

Moodteller uses language technology to predict the overall mood on the web, while Moodsignals records unusual peaks in mood levels.

The software then uses search engine technology to find an explanation for these mood swings.

Various other components of MoodViews are still under development. Moodspotter will be launched this summer to search the moods associated with certain persons, locations or products.

"The clearly measurable responses to worldwide events suggest that these instruments pick up the global mood. And not only of bloggers," the researchers stated.

De Rijke said that he has already been approached by journalists, marketing specialists, psychologists and bankers.

The researchers claimed that the application detected, not unexpectedly, a large peak in the 'drunk' mood on New Years Day.