Reply #11: UPDATE: It's a bad headline from ESPN -- "hated" not accurate...

[Auggie]

Gwen Knapp, S.F. Chronicle (4-30-10)

"The Nielsen Co., famous as the source of TV ratings, used a formula based on keywords indicating positive, negative or neutral feelings about a product to arrive at its findings. The study, the first of its kind, assessed a variety of blog posts and comments, message-board chatter and tweets from April 4 through April 25.

In the study, the ratings could have potentially ranged from a plus-5 to a minus-5. The Giants finished first with a 4.5 in the "overall sentiment score," and the A's took second with a 4.2. Cleveland, with a 0.9, narrowly beat the Red Sox for last place, while the presumably despised Yankees finished fifth from the bottom.

The formula relies on automated screening for a variety of words that could be construed as positive (good, great, like, love, well) or negative (hate, ineffectual, poorly). The method also takes into consideration whether, for example, the word "not" appears in conjunction with the word "good." A positive or negative expression about a particular team had to occur within six to seven words to be counted as a plus or minus.

SNIP

The company concedes that misspellings, emoticons and nuanced sarcasm cannot be taken into account in the analysis. The formula has safeguards to screen out posts about tigers in a post about zoos as opposed to the upper-case variety in Detroit, or cardinals in Rome versus the Albert Pujols crew, said Aaron Lewis, a Nielsen publicist.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/knapp/#ixzz0mawCmshx

If you want your dislike to be counted by Neilson, don't use terms/slang like G-nats, Frisco, or Skankees.