Twitter has announced that today will finally see the release of its “Nielson TV Twitter Rating” system, a partnership between the social network and the TV ratings tracking service Nielson.
The new service will help reveal how many tweets have been created about a particular TV show, as well as how many people are subsequently reached by these tweets. For example, Twitter revealed that Breaking Bad’s final episode had 1.2 million tweets created about it, with these tweets reaching 9.3 million accounts.
The feature has long been asked for by TV studios looking to help analyze their social media success. Twitter has become an invaluable asset for a number of shows, many of which choose to flash Twitter hashtags on-screen during episodes to try and get viewers to tweet about them.
Nielsen executive Andrew Somosi says that there will be intelligent filtering techniques used to ensure that tweets are properly associated with shows. For example, the system can tell when someone is talking about the show “Community” as opposed to someone simply using the word community.
Sorry, these ratings aren’t open to be viewed by anyone though. You’re going to have to sign your company/show up with Twitter for an unknown price to take advantage of them.
