New Website Measures Tumultuous Emotions Of Sox Fans

Red Sox fans are all too familiar with how their emotions can rise and fall depending on the changing fortunes of their beloved team.

Now, a new website aims to use social media to calculate just how high or low those emotions are.

Boston.com has rolled out a test version of a developing technology — you might call it a nervous indicator — that combs through Twitter traffic to gauge how Sox fans feel about the team and its players, and how those feelings change over time. It uses a complicated algorithm that looks for key words indicating pleasure or displeasure.

And, as Chris Rattey, Boston.com's director of product development, explained to WBUR's All Things Considered host Sacha Pfeiffer, it even has a so-called sarcasm filter.

You can see the site at thepulse.boston.com.