One of the often-overlooked benefits of the advent of social media is that we now have a public, archived, and searchable barometer for the way people are feeling at any given time. Sure, that might be the product of "over-sharing" or indicative of our modes of communication changing, but we can now see the mood of all Internet-using people, everywhere. And according to Hedonometer, a company that has been tracking the general feelings of people on Twitter, the saddest day the social-networking site suffered through occurred on April 15.
By using words like "sad," "tragedy," "death," and "sick" (instead of December 25, 2008, Twitter's happiest day, which had words like "love," "family," and "gift"), April 15 easily took the cake for most depressing. Not only is it Tax Day, but the entire Boston Marathon bombing was experienced through the micro-blogging site.
Another note: The second saddest day was December 14 (the day of the Sandy Hook shooting) and the second happiest was Christmas '09. (Poynter)
Photo: Courtesy of Hedonometer.