The Happiest City In America, According To Twitter, Is... [STUDY]

Scientists and statisticians can study Twitter for insights on people’s spending habits, what they watch on TV, their political views, and even their happiness.

Which is exactly what a group of researchers did, conducting an analysis of 10 million geotagged tweets to determine the happiest and most depressed states and cities in America. And the findings are fascinating.

First off, how do millions of disparate tweets turn into a happiness barometer?

The researchers coded 10 million geotagged tweets gathered from 373 urban areas in the contiguous United States during the calendar year 2011 for their happiness content, based on the appearance and frequency of words determined by Mechanical Turk workers to be happy (rainbow, love, beauty, hope, wonderful, wine) or sad (damn, boo, ugly, smoke, hate, lied).

Here’s a look at the coding (cue the eye glaze):

The results? Check it...