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Guest post by Jonathan Taplin, Professor at the University of Southern California and the Director of the school’s Annenberg Innovation Lab.  Next week Professor Taplin will be participating in the IBM Information on Demand and Business Analytics Forum (IOD11).

Two more World Series games played and millions of tweets later, IBM and USC Annenberg Innovation Lab students uncovered new findings in fans’ social sentiment in our ongoing World Series analysis.

Despite lower TV ratings for Game 3, we saw the volume of tweets increase from Game 2 as baseball’s diehard fans continue to turn to the Twitterverse and other social media platforms to pontificate about the game play and players and coaches on the field.

Using the same metrics from our initial World Series analysis, the number of “sentiment” tweets – that is, tweets both positive and negative, in our most recent sampling showed:

– In Game 3: St. Louis Cardinals’ Albert Pujols and the Texas Rangers’ Nelson Cruz were the most tweeted among players and coaches.

– In Game 4, the Cardinals’ Albert Pujols kept his crown and the Rangers’ Derek Holland led his team for total number of tweets.

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Great game play not only can result in a W for the team, but also a W for individual social media accolades.  In this most recent analysis, St. Louis Cardinals’ Albert Pujols, amassed unbelievable numbers following his historic baseball performance, receiving the most tweets on his team for both Game 3 and Game 4 and the most positive sentiment at 81% and 87% respectively.  The same could be said for the Rangers’ Derek Holland in Game 4, who received the most tweets and an 83% positive sentiment. Rangers’ Michael Young netted most positive sentiment on his team for Game 3 with 83%.  For those keeping score at home, the positive sentiment is the result of ‘T’ scores – the ratio of positive to negative sentiment indicated in tweets.

Our second analysis accurately correlates players’ large volumes of tweets to fans’ positive feedback, reiterating how important social media platforms are to capturing consumer sentiment and uncovering actionable insights. More importantly, it affords us an opportunity to view consistencies and inconsistencies with sentiment—what players continue to stay hot amongst fans, who is falling off the bandwagon, via real-time data to make or change decisions, be it promotions or other marketing efforts. It also goes to show those relying solely on mediums such as TV to uncover new fan insights will be at a disadvantage to their peers who are turning to social media to analyze sentiment to get a real-time temperature check on public attitudes as well as customer segments like diehard baseball fans that can result in making more insightful decisions.

Stay tuned for our final analysis at the conclusion of the World Series.  Enjoy the rest of the Series!

• Read about social media analysis from Games 1 and 2.
• Read more about “Behind the Diamond: Understanding MLB Fan Sentiment.”
• Learn about how IBM and USC AIL are conducting the social media analysis project.
• Check out images from the World Series Social Sentiment Index

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