Facemood :) Reads Moods from Facebook Statuses

Facebook provides a forum for people to vomit out their emotions but sometimes it’s hard to tell if your friend is having a bad day or is genuinely sad. Introducing Facemood :) (yes, the smiley face is part of the app’s name). Facemood is a $0.99 app (Rs. 45) for iOS devices that reads your friends’ Facebook status updates and using algorithms, assigns positive and negative mood points to words used in the status updates. For example, if your friend’s status is, “Playing soccer today, swimming in the evening”. Using algorithms, the app gathers individual word meanings and implications from sources like Urban Dictionary and the regular English dictionary, and deduces whether the status is one of positivity or negativity. You can also customize the algorithm so that if playing soccer is actually a negative experience for your friend, the mood associated with it can be something like, ‘dreading’.

Uses keywords to assess ‘mood points’

Facemood :) lets you browse through all your friends’ updates and you can even make a favourites list. The one thing that stands out about the app is its inability to read into sarcasm. So for instance, if your friend writes, “My day was just great, I totally didn’t go to jail today,” the app will assign positive mood points to that status, unless you reassign the algorithms for that status, in which case, you’re doing the work the app is supposed to do. The app seems fun but in no way replaces your own thought processes and intuition for what your friends’ moods are via their Facebook content.