Since they operate on completely different mediums, one would think that Twitter and television don’t really have so much in common, but a new study shows they actually have ties that work together.
The study, released yesterday by Nielsen, indicates there’s a causal relationship between Twitter and TV shows. Analyzing trends from 221 primetime broadcast programs, Nielsen found that TV ratings boosted the volume of tweets around a show for about half of episodes, while Twitter buzz affected a show’s TV ratings for about a third of episodes.
Case in point, Sharknado, the “so-bad-it’s-good” SyFy movie starring Tara Reid swept up a Twitter frenzy with millions of users, even if the movie itself only garnered 1.4 million viewers in its initial showing. However, its popularity is growing, presumably thanks to this Twitter buzz, with recent rebroadcasts attracting 1.9 million and then 2.1 million viewers.
Though the relationship between Twitter and TV isn’t always guaranteed – it really depends on the product – it’s nice to see that the two can get along when it comes to hyping up certain projects. Let’s see how much better it gets when Sharknado 2 comes around next year.
Yes, Sharknado 2 is coming. Be sure to tweet that.
Source: GigaOm
