Twitter Is In a Bad Mood on Thursdays

Written by Pat's Papers | Thursday, 22 July 2010 10:33 AM

They may only be 140 characters long, but it turns out that Twitter messages have a lot to say. The computer science department at Northeastern University analyzed over 300 million tweets to get a sense of the nation’s mood. And in a nutshell, this is what they found: If you’re looking for someone to share your good mood, avoid East Coasters on Thursdays around noon.

The data show that people tend to be happier at 6 am, have a low point around noon and then have their mood bolstered around quitting time. That makes sense. The pattern is replicated during the days of the week: Moods are generally high Sunday, get increasing lower over the week and hit their nadir on Thursday. From then on, however, spirits on on the mend as they soar through the weekend. The researchers say they used a list of words generated by a standard psychology test to reach their conclusions, which makes me really curious about the last set of data points.

Comparing tweets from the East Coast and West Coast makes you wonder what everyone is so happy about in California. Not only is the baseline mood on the East Coast noticeably lower, the peaks and valleys we experience throughout the day are much more dramatic than our West Coast counterparts. Good thing it’s Thursday, I feel like grumbling about this on Twitter.

Click here to download a hi-res PDF of the data