The Happiest Cities According To Tweets

Happiest cities according to tweets

Are you one of those that tweets what you are doing every single minute? Well, your tweets might have been used to measure the happiness of your state and your city.

The Vermont Complex Systems Center at the University of Vermont did a research and studied more than 10 million geotagged tweets from 2011 to rank the happiest cities and states in the US. A “hedonometer” measured the frequency and amount of positive and negative words appearing in tweets and ranked the cities based on that.

Given the difficulty of measuring the happiness of the people, the study warns this research made no difference between tourists or locals, the study also ignores the context in which the words measured where used. All type of swearing was included as a negative word, and although swearing could be used together with many words, changing the meaning of a message, researchers said it only accounted for 30% of the study.

Ready for the results?

Hawaii appeared as the happiest state while Louisiana ranked as the saddest.

As for the cities, Napa California was the happiest while Beaumont, Texas was the saddest.

But if you are wondering what you might have said that helped researchers tag your city as happy or sad, here we have a few examples

Positive words: give, know, act, okay, better, wish, money, make.

Negative words: Stupid, bored, lie, ill, don’t, tired, hate.

Although it’s a very limited study and gives us the view of a small percentage of people (only 15% of American adults use Twitter), you should review it before deciding where your next vacations will be and most important, where is the best place to work and live.

Below are the top 5 states and cities:

Happiest Cities:	Unhappiest Cities:
1. Napa, Calif.	1. Beaumont, Texas
2. Idaho Falls, Idaho	2. Albany, Ga.
3. Longmont, Colo.	3. Texas City, Texas
4. San Clemente, Calif.	4. Shreveport, La.
5. Simi Valley, Calif.	5. Monroe, La.
Happiest States:	Unhappiest States:
1. Hawaii	1. Louisiana
2. Maine	2. Mississippi
3. Nevada	3. Maryland
4. Utah	4. Delaware
5. Vermont	5. Georgia