* Gibbs' mood currently cynical and unconvinced
This week I was intrigued by yet another social networking service getting generally positive coverage: Moodjam from the MoodJam Research Group of the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
This week I was intrigued by yet another social networking service getting generally positive coverage: MoodJam from the MoodJam Research Group of the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
I was intrigued, but now that I’ve thought about it, I’m not. Let me explain what MoodJam is and then I’ll explain what is wrong with it.
After you register (for free) with MoodJam and confirm by clicking on the e-mailed link you can log in to the MoodJam Web site. On the “Post Your Mood” page you select, in sequence, from a palette of colors that you feel reflect your mood. You can then tag that particular selection with any words you like, and, optionally, add a note. Pressing “post” adds that selection to “Your Moods,” a publicly visible page for your account.
The display shown on the “Your Moods” page is a bar divided into sections that are sized relatively to the duration between your mood postings, with each section showing the colors selected. Mouse over each section and the tags and any comments are displayed in a pop-up bubble. You can see the results of my fooling around here (mouse over the green and black section for my favorite joke this month). The home page also shows a selection of MoodJam users’ moods.
So what is MoodJam designed for? The “About” page explains that: “MoodJam is a visualization of your moods and other people’s moods. Use MoodJam to: / Keep a record of your moods every hour, day, and weeks—as often as you want, for as long as you want. / Visualize your moods in beautiful color strips. / Learn about trends in your moods and colors you associate with specific moods. / Share your moods with friends, family, co-workers, and other people who matter to you.”
It also provides a Google Gadget so you can add your moods to your own Web site. This gadget was apparently the recipient of two Google Gadget Awards for the “Prettiest gadget” and the “Gadget most likely to get you a date” (the first award I understand, the second is simply bizarre).
The MoodJam Research Group doesn’t explain any of the concepts that underpin the service other than the rather vague assertions on the “About” page.
There is something about the idea that’s sort of interesting, but I fail to see any real value. At the heart of my not getting MoodJam is why do I want to document my moods in the first place? What kind of sad, self-indulgent “navel-gazing” dweeb would I be?
Beyond that there’s the fact that I can choose multiple colors of my mood in each posting, and with no key for other people to reference, the coloring is effectively meaningless. There’s also the issue that the delivery mechanism for monitoring other people’s moods is weak – you can’t assemble a Web page of just your friends moods; you have to visit each page separately. I can imagine all sorts of widgets to make mood posting easier, but I don’t really see the point.
Recently, there have been a lot of experiments in social networking that attempt to establish new ways to interact and know more about the presence of others. My money is on this kind of touchy-feely false intimacy becoming an historical footnote due to the overwhelming amount of interaction and data that underlies the experience of most Internet users – will people have time to manage and interact with all of these systems and services? No, not unless they really provide value.
Perhaps if MoodJam’s mood classification system were more structured, so that the colors were somehow significant, I might be more convinced that the idea has legs. But compared to the uncritical coverage by journalists and bloggers. my mood can be described as “cynical, unconvinced.” What colors do you choose for that?
