Year: 2006
Developed by: Jonathan Harris, Sep Kamvar
As the Internet evolved, people began turning their attention to the social realm. In 2006, MySpace was booming, Facebook started growing and blogging went mainstream.
"It was the year the social Web really became mass market," Boulton says.
Enter "We Feel Fine." The site searches blogs, MySpace, Facebook and a host of other social sites looking for the phrases "I feel," and "I am feeling." Using those keywords, the app pulls in a host of information about the individual: age, location, gender, even the current weather when and where the phrase was written.
Harris and Kamvar featured those "feelings" as multi-colored dots, creating a visual look at the world's emotions. Those dots, each one sized and colored based on a person's metrics, explode on the screen.
The site showed the power of the social data being collected on the Web, and helped humanize the millions of individual stories unfolding.
