Tweet Me About It!

The number of twitter followers that the star of TV show has, gives a significant amount of insight into the success of the show. In fact, twitter traffic regarding a show is more relevant in today’s social media age than the actual television ratings themselves. With the ability to record shows and watch them illegally online, the actual click of a remote is not an accurate measure of viewers anymore. A recent article in Entertainment Weekly about the hit teen thriller Pretty Little Liars suggests that the four stars’ interaction with fans about the show as well as their personal lives on social media keep the viewers tuning in. Collectively, they have 5.5 million followers and the show itself has over 1 million followers. It is evident that the presence of TV stars in interacting with fans is critical in a TV series’ popularity. Twitter, recognizing its instrumentality for TV networks, has released the Twitter TV ratings, outlining the 10 most talked about TV shows on Twitter. Ironically, the most tweeted about shows were not within the top 10 television ratings. It appears that data on twitter can be extremely useful due to the actual opinion that is expressed about the show being tweeted about, and even if it is negative, publicity is ultimately still publicity. As classmate Natalie Hayworth discusses in her blog, it is strategic partnerships with twitter that can be a valuable source of data for major television networks.