I mean no offense, but based on the folks I know using Twitter (at least here in NYC), I'm not so sure that people on Twitter are good representations of all of America.
The density-preserving map is somewhat hard to understand at first, and reminds me of the cover of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Check out the actual researchers' web page (at the bottom) for a conversion of the standard "darker-is-denser" map to the density-preserved map:
People in Florida seem to stay fairly happy, never actually reaching the red at any point during the day. Perhaps it is because there are more retired individuals, and less people in the workforce? It would be interesting to have more data about the cause of the moods, or how the mood analysis is done, what keywords were used, etc.
That would only make sense if the use of twitter was pretty equal across all age groups. Given that most retires are probably not using Twitter it is unlikely that the amount of retirees in Florida has an impact on the visualization.
I'm very surprised that with the amount marketing and promotions stuff on twitter, that the results haven't been skewed to the happy side of the scale.
Or is most of twitter really that negative? It appears to be mostly unhappy with just a few brief spots of happiness each day.
Is that really how most people live?