Here is some interesting data from last year’s Oscars harvested through Nielsen’s “Convergence Panel” – a sample of homes in which we measure both television and Internet in the same households. A study was done to monitor the people in the panel who were simultaneously following the Oscars on live television and over the Internet. They found that:
More than 1 in 10 people (11%) watching the Oscars this year did so while logged onto the Internet. This is nearly four times greater than the normal rate of simultaneous usage they observe.
While there was some expected surfing to places like IMDB for more information on movies, the true winner of the night was Facebook. People who used Facebook during the broadcast used it for an average of 76 minutes. This compares to a little more than 30 minutes on average for MySpace, and just a little more than 20 minutes for the major portals. People who used Facebook while watching the Oscars watched about 50% more of the broadcast than the average Oscar viewer.
Also more than 100,000 messages were sent via Twitter during the broadcast - that’s more than 400 message per minute, or nearly 7 per second. Tweets came in from all over the world in a range of languages. It was a true world wide event and yet the content reflected what you might find in conversations in the average living room.
I wonder what will happen during this year's Oscars. I discussed the possibilities earlier in the post, Twitter Takes on Television Making It More Social. It seems that twittering about TV while watching is not limited to the Oscars. Darren Waters in a BBC blog post, TV becomes social again, discussed how, “Last night I was watching Eurovision with Twitter running on my laptop. In real time, my Twitter friends and I shared comments and made observations about the event as it was happening. Twitter was being used to extend the experience of watching the event together, but also for people to share links to sites with backstory, or explainers etc.”
The possibilities are interesting. In fact according to the Wall Street Journal, Verizon is working making Twitter feeds available on TV screens to its FIOS subscribers. What is next?
Comments