Scientists at Amsterdam University have put together a set of blog analysis tools to track the collective mood of LiveJournal users.

http://ilps.science.uva.nl/MoodViews/ 

LiveJournal allows bloggers to set a "mood" value that they have at the time that they are posting to their blogs, and the scientists have created a number of tools to display that data, and to use it predictively, including Moodgrapher (display), Moodteller (prediction), Moodsignals (explanatory).  There are other tools slated for future release.

They correlate moods with words used in the blog posts, and global news feeds, to gain insight into the underlying reasons for the mood, uh, swings.

From the site: "Moodgrapher has made a number of interesting discoveries. Check out the impact of global events on global moods. Find out whether it is true that people drink more during the weekend. Observe states-of-mind with a cyclic nature; e.g., people feel energetic in the mornings and relaxed in the evening. All in all, Moodgrapher is a great tool for analyzing mass-behavior over time."

For example,  acrossValentine’s Day:



Grumpy Chris