The U.S. News & World Report featured the Annenberg Innovation Lab for using IBM social media technology to determine which World Series players are fan favorites.

The social media tool analyzes the number of tweets with positive or negative sentiment that mention St. Louis Cardinals or Texas Rangers players. This data could be important for team owners to see which players are the most marketable.

"We understood that the people who were leading in terms of fan sentiment and everything else were not highest paid players in the world," Annenberg Innovation Lab director and communication professor Jonathan Taplin said. "You don't have to have the most highly paid player to be the most popular."

Researchers will also use the data to determine if the amount of positive tweets matches player performance.

"We're going to track every player in terms of positive and negative sentiment and see if the fans agree with the sportswriters in terms of who was the most valuable player," said Rod Smith, vice president of emerging internet technologies at IBM.

IBM has partnered with journalism schools and businesses to measure real-time consumer sentiment in many fields. For example, USC Annenberg used the same technology to determine how movies would perform at the box office.

Read the entire U.S. News & World Report article here.