Over the past month we’ve been experimenting and tweaking our Blurrt Score metric so that it’s even more reactive than ever and the good news is that we’re now at a stage where it’s almost ready to be fully launched within Blurrt’s systems.
If you aren’t too sure what exactly the ‘Blurrt Score’ is, that’s not a problem as here’s a 100% authentic definition that absolutely maybe was written by ourselves.
Essentially this unique metric measures audience reaction by analysing and understanding sentiment expressed in social media posts using Blurrt’s own natural language processing system as well as factoring in the volume of conversation.
But does it work?
We decided to capture all tweets posted about the Liverpool and Chelsea players during last Friday’s Premier League clash. The window of collection ran from 19:30, 30 minutes before kick off until 22:25, 30 minutes after the full time whistle.
For those interested in the result, Liverpool edged the game 2-1. The game was competitive and quite exciting; just what Friday night football needed to help silence some of its critics.
But we wanted to see which players came out with the highest Blurrt score, and more importantly, how did that compare with other ratings given in the media.
The Top Three
Our top 3 players ranked by Blurrt Score were: Dejan Lovren, Jordan Henderson and Joel Matip.
Lovren received 20,139 tweets, of which 26% were positive and 6% negative – he scored 8.4.
Henderson received a huge 112,349 tweets, of which 45% were positive and 7% negative – he scored 8.3.
Matip received 8,552 tweets, of which 46% were positive and 6% negative – he scored 8.1.
But what did the papers say?
Now what’s interesting is when you take an average across all those papers, you get the following.
Our Jordan Henderson rating is pretty much spot on, which given the fact he scored an absolute screamer to win the game for Liverpool, is pretty understandable and also explains why the volumes of tweets were as high as they were.
But Lovren and Matip both have higher Blurrt Scores than their performance ratings…
The Blurrt Score takes into account the strength of positive and negative sentiment that’s being expressed within the text that’s written on social media, and for both Lovren and Matip, those that had good things to say about these two players were doing so in a highly positive way.
Lovren had returned from missing a game due to a training ground eye injury and not only scored a very well finished goal upon his return to the side, but also commanded the Liverpool defence very well throughout the game.
Matip on the other hand did make a slight error for the Chelsea equaliser, but that aside had a fantastic game and is fast becoming a fan favourite, not only because he didn’t cost Klopp anything, but because fans are really starting to recognise his ability to pass the ball out from the back.
So our Man of the Match is slightly different to the media consensus.
But we don’t mind that one bit. It was incredibly close between Lovren and Henderson (0.1!), but with a returning dominant defensive display, shiny black-eye and all, Lovren ensured Liverpool held out for the win and with the highest Blurrt Score, is our Man of the Match!
And for those interested in Chelsea players, here’s how their top 3 rated players scored.
Again, all understandable if you think about how the Blurrt Score considers how emotions are being expressed in a live, reactionary environment.
Courtois maybe should have done better, but made a great save late in the game.
Luiz was more entertaining than anyone else on the field, having pop shots and running everywhere.
Costa was a bit sluggish, but still scored a goal to give Chelsea hope.
We’ll end this piece with this interesting player rating comparison we disagree on quite a bit.
Mignolet only scored a 3.5 Blurrt Score and that’s down to the fact that 28% of the 3,447 posts about him were negative and only 25% positive.
But the papers are giving him, on average, a 6.3 – which is a reasonably high rating and even more surprising given the fact that the following are all direct quotes taken from their reviews.
Daily Mirror: Poor distribution. Does not look convincing under pressure. 6/10
The Independent: Several nervy moments. Karius waits in the wings, but this display bought him a stay of execution. 6/10
The Express: Had little to do all night and could do nothing to stop Costa’s strike. 7/10
Liverpool fans are clearly not convinced on Mignolet’s abilities and that’s certainly nothing new following a shaky few seasons, which explains why he is only scoring a Blurrt Score of 3.5.
We’re happy with our rating for Mignolet and if The Mirror want to give someone with “poor distribution” and who “doesn’t look convincing under pressure” a 6/10 – then they can do that, but that does seem to potentially devalue all the other ratings from that game along with it.
Perhaps one solution is that they should give the Blurrt Score a try instead and let their ratings be dictated by aggregate audience opinion…Just an idea!