Nielsen’s numbers back up Twitter’s second-screen push

I’m not sure this is very surprising news, but it’s great to see more research firms continue to evolve as these social networks play a bigger part of our lives. I for one just hope Twitter eventually implements the *spoiler* feature we’ve seen recently from others so I can actually use twitter when I’m behind on some shows.

Nielsen is starting to look at Twitter data to gauge the social media impact of television shows. The effort was first announced last December, but Nielsen didn’t release its first Twitter TV Ratings report until Monday. The results weren’t that surprising: tweets about TV have increased by 38 percent year-over-year, from 190 million to 263 million. TV events like the “Breaking Bad” finale or controversial shows, like an episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” that sparked a Twitter war between Kimmel and Kanye West, cause a wave of social buzz.

TechHive

  • Looking forward to see where

    Looking forward to see where this is going. Looks like Facebook is now in the act to and they are selling the discussions for private and public post to networks too.

  • I think the results from

    I think the results from Twitter are going to be limited to a much younger demographic.  Old farts like me don’t use Twitter or Facebook, and I watch a lot of TV.  Nielsen ratings are sort of like political polls.  They take a sampling of households and extrapolate the data from there.  The actual number of households watching a particular show is nothing more than a best guess based on a small sample of data.  Actual numbers may be something completely different.  I can see where Twitter could be helpful to them since the more data they gather, the more accurate the results.  They will no doubt have to factor in the age groups that are more likely to use Twitter since it won’t apply across the board to all age groups.  My 90-year old mother barely does e-mail, let alone use Twitter or Facebook.