Sure, the GNP is important and all, but facebook can now “prove” Thanksgiving is the best holiday of the year (followed by Christmas then New Year’s Eve). By using people’s status updates, facebook has been able to rate the “Gross National Happiness” (for the USA at least). They pick out certain words that are attributed to being positive (eg. “happy,” “yay” and “awesome”), and those that are attributed to be negative (eg. “sad,” “doubt” and “tragic”) and plot their use. Weird use of facebook to say the least, but interesting concept of national feelings.

[via]

none | Computers, Math, Science