The founders of Twitter could not have predicted this. Twitter and TV? But Twitter’s goal is clear now – if you enjoy watching good TV, take to Twitter and talk about – engage.
Scandal ranked #1 on the new Nielsen Twitter TV ratings for its season premiere last week. The popular drama clocked in 713,000 tweets reaching a Twitter audience of 3.7 million.
Breaking Bad’s season finale generated a record 1.24 million tweets. The conversation peaked at 22,373 tweets per minute.
Twitter’s history has been known for breaking news like the Arab Spring, US Airways Flight 1549 landing on the Hudson River, to Lady Gaga’s meat dress at the VMAs and now TV conversation.
Fred Graves, the head of Twitter TV said, “When viewers watch TV–their smartphone or tablet at their side–using Twitter to chat with their virtual friends about a program, it creates “the world’s biggest couch,” he says. And who better to have gossiping on the sofa with you than the star of the show?” I know you agree. I sure do. So if it’s Scandal, Breaking Bad, Games of Thrones, or Homeland, I look forward to reading the Tweets and engaging my Twitter friends in real time.
Nevertheless, Twitter has a few hills to climb – getting celebs to join Twitter and also Tweet about their TV dramas, which is the case with James Spader, the star of the highly rated The Blacklist. Spader is not on Twitter but the company is trying to get him on.
“The actor is returning to television this fall as a creepy criminal mastermind in a highly anticipated show called The Blacklist, Graver wants Spader on Twitter posting behind-the-scenes photos from the set, live-tweeting episodes, conversing with fans–and hell, maybe even tweeting creepy criminal-mastermindy things. That would be just fine.” (Fred Graver, Twitter’s head of TV)
And so as Nicole Laporte put it, “Today, Twitter and TV may be synonymous–a show is no longer a show without a requisite hashtag.”
Tell us what you watch and tweet.
