Nielsen and Twitter formally announced their partnership on Monday, explaining how they plan to monitor Twitter chatter about television shows before, after and during the time they air.
Back in December, Nielsen and Twitter announced plans to begin monitoring what’s being called ‘social TV,’ describing the phenomenon that people love to use the micro-blogging site to chat about television. It’s instant conversation, with people live tweeting shows and events and chatting about it with other viewers.
According to The New York Times, Nielsen introduced Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings. To help implement the product, Nielsen acquired SocialGuide. “We feel this is going to be a credibility-building moment for the industry,” SocialGuide CEO Andrew Somosi told the Times.
Somosi said that the product will not only measure the people actually doing the tweeting, but also the people who see the tweets about a particular show. The example used is Grey’s Anatomy. Only 225,000 users tweeted about the Sept. 26 episode as it aired, but Nielsen claims that 2.8 million different Twitter accounts saw those tweets. The trouble, of course, is trying to figure out how that number impacts the amount of viewers who saw the show.
The product launch comes after Twitter’s IPO, in which Twitter said that Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings will not “directly generate revenue,” notes Deadline. Instead, the hope is that it “will enhance our attractiveness to users and advertisers” and can build Twitter’s reputation as a ‘second screen’ for TV viewers.
Twitter and Nielsen still have to convince the network’s that this will be a viable statistic for them, since many know that most of the talking about television shows is still done off the computer.
image: Twitter's official page