Robots track drunk & lonely bloggers

Sploid
Apr. 21, 2006

Creepy new software is tracking the moods of bloggers who keep Live Journal diaries, and corporate America is already inventing ways to make money off the data.

MoodViews keeps tabs on the "mood tags" Live Journal bloggers often use on approximately 150,000 diary entries every day.

The software has found that the tag "drunk" is most often used on weekends and that "lonely" and "loved" are both common on Valentine's Day, New Scientist reported this week.

Last summer, just before the latest Harry Potter book was released, MoodViews found great excitement amongst the Live Journal crowd and was then able to connect the happy mood to heavy use of words such as "Harry" and "book."

But the most interesting application is MoodTeller, a program that actually predicts moods days in advance.

Eventually, businesses will be able to predict exactly when they should release a new product and political operations will be able to manipulate frightened, ignorant voters even more than they do today.