Applications
Twitter helps determining mood swings
MUMBAI: We thought Twitter is either used to self-promote, or find out what a public figure is up or simply freak out over the news.
But for Sociologists, a 24/7 global flow of regularly updated status messages is a rich source for research – as Michael Macy and Scott Golder of Cornell University discovered when they browsed through nearly 500 million tweets as part of a study that is being published in the 29 September edition of Science.
Macy and Golder searched the tweets published by users from 84 countries between February 2008 and January 2010 associated with both positive and negative emotions. The researchers also analysed emotions.
What they found is that Twitter can be used in the form of a global mood ring, reflecting the rise and fall of emotions around the world. According to researchers, the mornings reflect optimism, peaks around breakfast before falling and hitting the lowest mark in late afternoon, and then bouncing back during evenings.
Interestingly, the pattern is common across cultures and countries.
Curiously, the mood cycle stays on weekends too, except pushed back a couple of hours since people tend to sleep and wake up later, which seems to signify that it‘s not simply the annoyance of being at work – and the pleasure of being off the clock – that drives those cycles, as Golder told the New York Times: “This is a significant finding because one explanation out there for the pattern was just that people hate going to work. But if that were the case, the pattern should be different on the weekends, and it‘s not. That suggests that something more fundamental is driving this – that it‘s due to biological or circadian factors.”
Work, however, does play a major role in diving moods. Emotions, globally, reaches its lowest levels on Monday afternoons, gradually rising and hitting the highest levels during weekends.
The researchers also found a “striking effect” in mood related to changes in daylength. Average positive mood increased when daylength increased, as the summer solstice approached, but decreased as the winter approached. Average negative mood did not increase or decrease seasonally.
“This suggests that ‘winter blues‘ is associated with decreased positive affect, not increased or decreased negative affect,” said Golder.
The researchers contend that the increased positive affect approaching the summer solstice may correspond to longer days and earlier light, thereby reducing the discrepancy between social and biological timing.
Applications
With 57 per cent single new users, Ashley Madison rebrands as discreet dating platform
Platform says majority of new members now identify as single
INDIA: Ashley Madison is shedding the “married-dating” label that defined it for two decades, repositioning itself as a platform for discreet dating in what it calls the post-social media age.
The rebrand, unveiled in India on 27 February, 2026, marks a structural shift in business model and identity. Once synonymous with married dating, the company now describes itself as the “premier destination for discreet dating” under a new tagline: Where Desire Meets Discretion.
The pivot is data-driven. Internal figures show that 57 per cent of global sign-ups between 1 January and 31 December, 2025 identified as single: a notable departure from the platform’s married core. The company argues that its community has already evolved beyond its original positioning.
“In an age where our lives have been constantly put on public display, privacy has become the new luxury,” said Ashley Madison chief strategy officer Paul Keable. He framed the platform’s offering as “ethical discretion” for singles, separated, divorced and non-monogamous users seeking private connections.
The shift also taps into wider digital fatigue. A global survey conducted by YouGov for Ashley Madison, covering 13,071 adults across Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US, found mounting discomfort with hyper-public online lives.
Among dating app users, 30 per cent cited constant swiping and messaging as a source of fatigue, while 24 per cent pointed to pressure to curate public-facing profiles and early personal disclosure. Some 27 per cent said fears of screenshots or information being shared contributed to exhaustion; an equal share cited unwanted attention.
The retreat from oversharing appears broader. According to the survey, 46 per cent of adults actively try to keep most aspects of their life private online. Only 8 per cent feel comfortable sharing most aspects publicly, while 35 per cent say they are becoming more selective about what they disclose.
Ashley Madison is betting that this cultural recalibration towards controlled visibility can be monetised. By doubling down on privacy infrastructure and reframing itself around discretion rather than infidelity, the company is attempting to convert reputational baggage into a premium proposition.
