Microsoft MoodScope will Detect your Mood from your Smartphone Usage Patterns

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Microsoft is currently working on what they call the first of its kind smartphone technology, ‘MoodScope’, that senses your mood and automatically shares it with your friends on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Bill Gates looks to be happy here!

The work of a team at Microsoft Research has resulted in a smartphone app which can detect the moods of its users by analysing phone calls, texts ,browser history and other smartphone commerce. The test was conducted on a group of users from US and China, with the user updating their moods atleast 4 times a day. The app analysed the habits of the users and tracked which applications they used, and what actions they undertook upon certain triggers, for a 2-month period. The researchers found that the usage of the phone differed depending on their moods. It compared this data with the set mood of the user to design a pattern of mood tracking on its own.

Microsoft reported that their initial test results showed an accuracy of about 66% in predicting the users’ mood, while they claimed that the service would be able to improve itself upto 93% accuracy by analyzing user activity for a 2-month period.

Sounds interesting, doesn’t it? But it actually doesn’t come for free. It comes at the cost of your privacy. As the tracking of user activities is a part of this new ‘technology’, privacy advocates might be just getting the right thing to get get their hammers on.

What do you think about the idea of sharing your mood at the cost of your privacy? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.