Facebook tries to one-up Twitter, will provide analytics to TV networks in US

Television is the place to be as far as social networking websites are concerned. After Twitter wooing the cable-TV watching viewers online with conversations, Facebook has stepped up its act to be more relevant around television chatter. The social networking giant is going to go about doing this by taking a route opposite to that of Twitter’s. It will do so by providing more data for broadcasters.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook will be going all out by providing weekly analytics and engagement reports to a few broadcast companies. ABC, NBC, Fox and CBS along with a “small number of select partners” will be provided analytics data like likes, shares, comments regarding their shows.

Along with these action-based analytics, the companies will have information about which episodes inspired and sparked off conversations on Facebook and how many members participated in actions. These reports will not be made public.

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More data for broadcast companies (TV image credit: Getty Images)

Both Facebook and Twitter have been racing neck-in-neck as far as being relevant to the television-watching audience is concerned, and with good reason. At the time of writing this article, Breaking Bad, the acclaimed TV series has just had its season finale aired and is one of the top trending topics pretty much in all countries around the world, including India. There have been approximately 940,000 tweets made about the show in the past 24 hours alone.

This kind of number is a data mine waiting to be explored and Twitter seems to be doing all it can to milk it. Recently, Twitter acquired social data startup Trendrr and teamed up with Nielsen to create social TV ratings. The micro-blogging website obviously wants to tap into the real-time market generated by TV shows on its website and use it to create a win-win situation with broadcast companies.

Facebook’s move to provide analytics to media companies is yet another step by the social networking giant to follow on the real-time path too. The website has been making continued efforts to stay relevant in the world of real-time, especially with the introduction of hashtags and trending topics. Facebook earlier provided tools for broadcasters to have a greater access to public data too.

The move to make data available to more broadcasters seems to be a good one but there’s a lot of work yet to be done by Facebook. According to the WSJ report, Facebook has to create a library of keywords for each show in order to help broadcast networks track the chatter. Facebook seems to be playing on the fact that it not only has a large user base but it also has one rooted in real identities. “The conversation is being generated by a group that is much more representative of the general population– that means we should have a better signal as it relates to ratings,” says Daniel Slotwiner, the Head of Facebook’s Measurement Team.

While Facebook and Twitter fight over which site is more relevant for television chatter, media companies win with more feedback as does the average social networking website user who gets to have his voice heard.