We Feel Fine (.org)

From the Willamette Week
Wed. 10-12-06

WeFeelFine.org, online since May, has been accumulating millions of emotions from blogs around the world since August 2005.

Designed by Brooklyn artist Jonathan Harris and Bay Area Google guru Sepander Kamvar, the WeFeelFine project searches the Net every few minutes for iterations of the ubiquitous online diary phrase "I feel." 

When the site finds an emotion, it records an entire sentence and then catalogs the feeling by type.  If the sentence reads as a caption to a photograph, the picture is also taken into the system. Overall, the site uploads an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 new emotions from six continents per day.

Due to the open platform of blogs, WeFeelFine.org is able to extract a large amount of amount of demograhic information about its authors.  Automatically, the site's program organizes the data it gleans into a particle system.  As soon as a viewer accesses the site, a deluge of dots jitterbugs across the computer screen.  The color, shape and size of each confetti-colored particle indicates what type of emotion is inside it.

A particle can be opened and explored by clicking on it - the unique feeling of an individual and a link to the blog source are thus revealed.  This project is impressive, and this site is unique and gets a hold of you if you click around a bit and figure it out.

Check out this Willy Week story about WeFeelFine.org. I dont think you will soon forget it if you do.