OREANDA-NEWS. June 04, 2013. VTB and digital agency Ailove have launched a unique internet project – ‘The Happiness Index’. "This research project is aimed at studying people’s behaviour on social networking sites, which are popular with many of our customers, and identifying what makes them happy,” VTB Senior Vice President and Head of the Press Office Vadim Sukhoverkhov said.

“Modern life and business are unimaginable without the internet. Integration with social networks is a necessary element of modern communication with clients. Now more than ever we have to understand how our customers spend their time on the internet in order to offer them the products and services they really need. ‘The Happiness Index’ project seemed very interesting to us and very modern, and we have decided to support it.” Vadim Sukhoverkhov added.

‘The Happiness Index’ is designed as an interactive map of Russia, which displays the happiness level for every Russian city and a separate index for each region. The project aims to identify what makes Russian internet users happy by studying their behaviour on the web. The index is based on four main sources of information: an analysis of keywords in posts on Facebook, VK, and Twitter, user messages submitted to the project explaining what makes them happy, as well as news and weather. Users can calculate their personal happiness index by creating an account on the project website and then share it on social networking sites.

Ailove CEO Oleg Zhdanov believes the current method for calculating the official international happiness index is very detached from actual people, their feelings and perceptions. "So we decided to create a project that would analyse the subjective happiness of each individual internet user,” Mr Zhdanov said. “The internet is an enormous repository of information that influences the way people think. By studying what makes people happy, analysing and interpreting the factors, we will be able to create and customise content that could potentially influence people’s mood.”

Soon the project will start analysing information from the popular social networking sites Instagram, Foursquare, and Twitter, including wall posts, tweets, check-ins, and photos that are interpreted as positive and affect the index in a particular region. The result will be an interactive visualisation and a mathematical measure for a geographical location.

"We encourage everyone to take part in our study, visit the project's web site, log in and share what makes you happy," added Vadim Sukhoverkhov.

To check news and interesting facts about the study, please visit the project website and VTB’s page on Facebook.

‘The Happiness Index’ can be accessed at www.ruhappiness.ru.