Audience research company Nielsen, in partnership with Twitter, has announced its plan to bring Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings (NTTR) to Australia in the second half of this year. The ratings service, which will run alongside Nielsen’s existing television stats, will rate TV shows based on their popularity with Twitter users — on-topic tweets, retweets and interactions will all count towards a show’s overall position.
This is big news if you’re working in advertising, marketing or any of a dozen other industries that make money off TV, but for the rest of us, it’s just interesting. In the US, where NTTR has been running since October last year, there’s a weekly top ten list: in the latest info, schlocky reality show The Bachelor topped the list, but The Walking Dead came in second — showing a disproportionate amount of interest and online action for a TV show with a relatively small TV fanbase.
Another interesting statistic — according to Mumbrella, Twitter Australia is said to be pegging the number of Australian Twitter users at around four million — that’s almost a fifth of the entire population. [Twitter Blog]