Despite predictions that digital age would ‘kill’ TV, most consumers in the developed countries (particularly, in the U.S.) are watching TV more than ever, while laptops, tablets and mobiles, so-called «second» or «third screens», even enrich TV viewing experience. As the latest Nielsen’s report reveals, 85% of mobile owners use their tablet or smartphone while watching TV at least once per month, and 40%do so daily. More specifically, 41% use a tablet while watching TV daily, and 39% use a smartphone.

Pic. Twitter helps measure the social TV audience, collage from www.smarttvnieuws.nl

Considering the growing demand from networks and marketers for a tool helping better understand how much benefit social TV provides for rating of the US TV shows, two leading companies in their areas — Nielsen and Twitter — has come into agreement to develop such a measurement tool called “Nielsen Twitter TV Rating” and implement it by the end of summer 2013.

It is expected that the rating will not just track the total number of comments on TV shows on Twitter (which is already being done by the recently acquired analytics platform Social Guide), but measure the number of people who comment and the number of those, who read those messages.

“Our users love the shared experience of watching television while engaging with other viewers and show talent. Twitter has become the world’s digital water cooler, where conversations about TV happen in real time. Nielsen is who the networks rely on to give better content to viewers and clearer results to marketers,” said Chloe Sladden, Twitter’s vice president of media. “This effort reflects Nielsen’s foresight into the evolving nature of the TV viewing experience, and we’re looking forward to collaborating with Twitter ecosystem partners on this metric to help broadcasters and advertisers create truly social TV experiences.”

In addition, Twitter is introducing a new option of tweet archives. This should be rolling out ‘slowly’, as said in the brand’s blog post.

Twitter also announced yesterday the changes to its top-management team: Ali Rowghani, previously company’s CFO, announced COO, and his successor on CFO’s post Mike Gupta will join from Zynga.

* Updated on December 20, 2012