The VMAs made headlines this past Sunday, achieving record ratings for the program and for network. We’re thinking that Lady Gaga’s gender-bending performance, Beyonce’s baby bump, and Britney Spears’ lifetime achievement award all had something to do with the high viewership. The awards made headlines at SocialGuide too, as the most social program we have measured to date. If you tweeted at all about the VMAs, then your comment was really one in a million, because we saw that the show brought in a record 1,323,922 social comments during airtime. (Check out the program page for the VMAs here.)
The VMAs bested Game 6 of the NBA Finals and the recent premier of the Jersey Shore, both very social programs. Here’s the breakdown:
The VMAs had 559,610 unique users (59% share) and 1,323,922 social comments (55% share.) This activity topped Game 6 of the finals by over 30% of uniques and 22% of comments. It beat the Jersey Shore premiere by 63% and 120% respectively.
The Social Times had this to say about our Social 100 data for the 28th: “MTV took all three top spots for the daily Social 100 on Sunday, August 28, 2011. The top spot went to the MTV Video Music Awards, the second to Jersey Shore and the third to the VMA Pre-Show.”
It’s great to see the broadening interest in social activity around television. We’re also excited that networks are starting to use our social TV data as a new metric to convey the success of their programming. VH1′s recent press release about two of their hit shows, Basketball Wives and Single Ladies, included SocialGuide’s social TV data to communicate the programs’ social activity in July.
The Value of SocialGuide
Our scale. SocialGuide not only tracks the social activity of MTV and VH1, but of 170+ of the most popular broadcast and cable networks. Because we license our US TV listings data from Tribune Media Services, we track every program, across every program type (new, repeat, series, movies, special and sports events) that air on these 170+ channels – typically over 4,000+ unique shows/month.
Our methodology. We track the social activity when it matters most – around airtime. And our Intelligent Social TV Recognition System has a dynamic and editorial search process to ensure that we capture the most comprehensive set of comments and the natural ways that people are being social around TV. (We’re happy to give examples if you’d like to learn more).
Bottom line. Our scale of coverage + our methodology makes SocialGuide the most comprehensive and relevant source of social TV data.
We encourage you to explore The Social 100 – where we publish our rank of the 100 Most Social Programs, Primetime, Episodes, Sports Events & Networks each week and month (and the top 10 of these daily). Importantly, we also publish the total social activity across all of the networks we monitor – giving networks and the industry a true view of the social share for an episode, program or network. We now also allow you to export this data to .PDF and .xls and to sign up for a free email subscription to this data.
To learn more about our data, email us at info@socialguide.com.
It’s time for our weekly Social 100 Roundup! This is where we will highlight weekly data about the most social programming on TV. The data comes from the Social 100, our system which measures the social activity around every television program aired across 160+ of the most popular broadcast and cable networks in the US. If you want more detail about our methodology and our social TV measurements, please see our last post.
So why is it important to track this activity – and publish it – every day, week and month? We believe this gives TV fans, and the television and media industry, a new standard for understanding the social impact of the TV shows, and a baseline for social TV in general. For more about this, Broadcasting & Cable and Lost Remote both talked about our measurement system in recent articles.
Now for the data: For the week of Monday, July 4th, 2011, SocialGuide tracked:
• 2,007,691 social TV comments
• 884,075 social TV watchers (uniques)
Interestingly, only one broadcast network, CBS, made the top 5 for Primetime this week. Big Brother, entering its 13th season had its premiere on July 7th, and brought in over 45,000 social comments by 20,000+ unique social tv watchers.
Other highlights:
• #1 sports event was the MLB Baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Yankees. It had 89,053 comments by 54,410 uniques. We guess Derek Jeter’s 3,000th hit might have had a little something to do with this. (Congrats Jeter!)
•#2 most social sports event was the Quarterfinal in the Women’s World Cup between Brazil and USA. Amazing game. We’re clearly not alone when we say we look forward to seeing #USWNT go to the finals.
• If anyone doubts the power of Oprah Winfrey, repeats of her program, The Oprah Winfrey Show, are still scoring high on the social charts. It was the #10 most social program with over 26,000 comments this week. Wow!
There is so much more to explore within our Social 100 and we encourage you to look at this data. We think you’ll find yourself surprised as we were by some of the results (especially with the show that took the #1 spot for overall most watched program of the week!) So please check out the Social 100 and read our FAQs if you have any questions.
We’ve actually been live with our beta since March, but because we’ve been hustling to get our products rolled out, we’re only now ready to get our blog on. Better late than never, right? Thanks for your patience.
At SocialGuide, we’ve had the pleasure of immersing ourselves in the social conversations that people are having about TV. And there are a lot of them. This year we’ve seen over 85 million comments by nearly 9 million unique people. And this behavior is likely to increase. Studies show that of the 300 million Americans who watch TV, 60.4% of them are on a mobile device while they watch.
So a lot of people are being social, but as a TV fan, how do you make sense of all of this activity? That’s where SocialGuide comes in.
SocialGuide is a social TV platform. We know the shows that are airing across the country, on every cable and satellite system. We then identify, capture and filter the millions of comments that people make about TV shows – as these shows air. From this activity we do a few things:
• We’ve created the first real-time, “Social Programming Guide” or SocialGuide, which ranks shows on your TV system in order of their social popularity. Think of it as a crowd sourced TV listings guide. You no longer have to go to your cable guide and scroll endlessly though the channel listings trying to find something to watch. SocialGuide will tell you what shows, along with their channel numbers, are trending right now.
• We’ve created the ultimate social show companion to use while you watch your favorite shows or sporting events. From the SocialGuide, click on any trending show to see the real-time social activity around that episode or live event. As a default, you can see what “Everyone” is saying about this program – see funny comments or find new people to follow. Or if you’d prefer, view the “Friends” stream so you can see what your friends are watching and talking about. We’ve also added thousands of Twitter accounts into our Cast & Team stream – so you can follow what the stars and athletes are tweeting as the event happens. It’s easy to tell people what you are watching and easily join in the conversation.
• For those with an iPhone or Android device, we’ve released our SocialGuide App. Now you can get SocialGuide and the all filtered social streams – on your mobile device. You can read more about our app features and download it here.
• Finally, we’ve launched the Social 100. This is our social ratings product, and the first public ranking of the 100 Most Social Programs, Episodes, Primetime, Sports Events and Networks. This gives TV fans, and the television and media industry, a new standard for monitoring the social activity around Television. We’ll be following up with more info on the Social 100 so stay tuned.
We’re just getting started but we think we’re really on to something. Fortunately, it doesn’t appear that we’re alone in our positive thinking. We’ve been thrilled by coverage about SocialGuide in TechCrunch, Lost Remote, MultiChannel News, SocialTimes, GigaOM, All things Digital, and The Los Angeles Times. Here’s more of our recent press. Equally exciting, we were named on of one of the “10 NYC Start Ups to Watch” by the editors of Time Inc.
Our imaginations have been captivated by the witty, funny, thoughtful and sometimes bizarre and even outrageous comments that millions of people have shared about their favorite TV shows. We’re seeing more and more of this activity – and are just getting started in creating great products around it.
Thanks for reading and we hope you continue to track our progress. We love feedback. Use our Feedback link (on any page) or comment below.
Team SocialGuide
@Social_Guide
