Comments on: Time. Location. Emotion.

By: Tyler Hayes

Tyler Hayes — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:31:22 +0000

Interesting that Adrian brought up the Biomapping resource, I’d never seen that. Inetium did some heat mapping at the National Civic Summit in Minneapolis this summer, though it was not emotion-centric, just simply based on tweets and where they were coming from. Biomapping is interesting, but I don’t think I’d be down to wear a Galvanic Skin Response detector just to add my own data. Unless maybe it was integrated into the back of a watch?

WeFeelFine is so cool, his TED Talk is even better. But I agree with Paul, it needs more description and differentiation within itself. The first time I visited it (stumbled on it, hadn’t seen the TED Talk yet) I was unbelievably confused as to what I was looking at.

As for Paul’s idea, the intent is phenomenal. Not too far from what Google does by mapping how much social mention there is of things like “swine flu” so that people can track outbreaks. My first suggestion: just built it already. And then tweak it continuously. I have yet to see anyone else do this. My only other suggestion: try to find other ways of finding people’s location-based data, like (in the background) searching to see if they also have a Brightkite profile, and looking for their most recent posted location. Or, see if Twitter’s API lets you see IP addresses (or at least regions) rather than their profile location which is sometimes misleading, outdated, or purposely incorrect (i.e. some people put Twin Cities instead of Minneapolis).

By: Adrian Ho

Adrian Ho — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:52:11 +0000

Check these guys out. We have been talking to a bunch of clients about this technology, it has a bunch of applications

http://biomapping.net/

By: Mark Wagner

Mark Wagner — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:12:56 +0000

Joseph,
The Johnathan Harris thing is what got Paul and I started on the discussion. Paul was the first to point it out (wefeelfine.org)and a few months later I caught up to Paul’s original stream of thought. It is definitely where things are evolving.

By: cam

cam — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:24:10 +0000

I have a connection (somewhere) to a market research group that created an entire emotion implication tool based on word choice. I gotta find that guy.

I smell a mashup.

By: taulpaul

taulpaul — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:20:36 +0000

When wefeelfine.org first came out, I found it fascinating. It does a beautiful job at looking at this type of data in a visceral way. One of the things it doesn’t do well, is quantify with flexibility. Qualitative vs. Quantitative….though Tufte would be proud.

By: Joseph Rueter

Joseph Rueter — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:14:45 +0000

Have you seen? http://wefeelfine.org/

By: taulpaul

taulpaul — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:05:46 +0000

Thanks for the thought. I was thinking of that a little bit too. The first thought in my head was if there was any tie between murder rates in certain locations, and a measured sentiment in that area before the murder occurs. Maybe it wasn’t my first thought, but I know that data is readily available in a type GIS format, so it’s easier to analyze.

The question I want to pose, can collective emotion predict actual events? Is the twitter base a large enough sample size?

By: FalkinInvesting

FalkinInvesting — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:46:16 +0000

That is quite a concept! It would be really cool to see the impact of breaking news and how it spiders out!