Twitter, Music and Mood

Over the last nine months or so, I've pretty embraced the Facebook thang. It was great getting in touch with folks I've not seen for ages, looking at pictures, and generally exchanging the inanities of daily life in a gentle way. I never did get the zombie thing, nor the stripper-name thing, but I quite liked the books, photos; and best of all the status updates. As a medium, it really got me interested in how the tinterweb is changing how we interact with each other. However, I'm getting a bit bored with it now - and am off exploring new stuff....

Twitter. Essentially, it's the functionality bit of FB that I embraced the most - in FB lexicon : the status update. In twitter lingo : a tweet. The answer to the question "what are you doing". In 140 characters. Think text message. Think short and sweet. There's a great little animation that answers the "why twitter" question here

So, I've been tweeting. There's a feed on the left hand side of the blog page (if you're reading this in FB notes, just click on "original post" at the top to get to the original). I'm interested in the discipline that the 140 characters impose. There's both the regular stuff of daily life, and some remarkably erudite discussion threads about technology and the new economy. What's tickling me most though, is "LOTD"

LOTD is "lyric of the day". It's a twitter bot - you send it a message quoting your song lyric of the day and the artist, and it re-tweets it under the LOTD username... hence during the day you can follow an eclectic mix of twitterers song lyrics : so far it's inspired me to unearth a few forgotten gems on my ipod. In case you're interested in how the bot works - here's the lowdown from whitneymcn, the brains behind it. Cute.

I've also been following a rather interesting blog (and twitter) of a chap called Fred Wilson, a VC in NYC, mostly about technology, new economy etc. But yesterday Fred made an interesting post about needing to "lift the funk". There followed an interesting thread of comments on various different approaches... but music featured in a quite a few

So these two things led me to thinking....

...There is a clear correlation between my mood and my tunes. Or lack of tunes. Not sure which way the cause and effect goes. But when I'm listening to upbeat tunes, I'm generally in upbeat mood. When I'm listening to chillout, I'm well, chillin' out. When I'm listening to Pink Floyd, I'm wallowing in self pity. The real danger comes when I'm not listening to music - that's when I'm really falling off the edge of the world (very rare I hasten to add).

Soooo, is there an app out there anywhere that enables the "friending / following" (whatever the terminology is) of our ipod playlists - would it possible to "take the mood pulse" of a group of friends, (or with my professional hat on - an organisation or work team) by music choices ? I wonder if there's any research out there that tells what the likely mood impact of music might be. Personally the higher the bpm, the more chirpy I am (no shit sherlock) - is that universal ? Perhaps there's something more neural that could be done? Is there a magic playlist for starting the day off in a good way ??

FWIW, at the moment, in the mornings, I'm really hammering the Scissor Sisters - "Mama" - it just makes me smile so much, I'm singing along on the tube (great stuff - people leave breathing space around me because they think I'm nuts)... and right now, it's chillout with Zero 7.

J