Walking Dead feasts on social media

The Walking Dead generated more Tweets and had a larger audience on Twitter than any other show in the US in 2014, according to Nielsen.

The research firm said that an average of 4.9 million people saw at least one Tweet about each new episode of the programme, and that people sent an average of 576,000 Tweets about each episode of the AMC show.

The second ranked show was ABC’s The Bachelor with an average Twitter audience of 3.84 million and average number of Tweets of 215,000, followed by ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars with a Twitter audience of 3.81 million and 489,000 Tweets sent.

Other series that made up the top 10 were American Horror Story: Freak Show, Game of Thrones, Teen Wolf and Scandal, while the most-Tweeted TV series minute of 2014 in the US was The Voice on NBC, which garnered 310,000 Tweets.

The top TV special on Twitter was the Academy Awards with a Twitter audience of 13.9 million and 11.2 million Tweets sent, followed by this year’s Grammy Awards.

The top TV sports event on Twitter was the Denver Broncos vs Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl with a Twitter audience of 15.3 million and 25.3 million Tweets sent.

The stats came as market research firm Ipsos in North America published a new report, called The Twitter Effect: Understanding Twitter’s Role in TV Behaviours.

In this, Ipos claimed that 93% of Twitter users were likely to have a cable, satellite or fibre-optic subscription compared to 86% of non-users.

“What this translates into is that Twitter users are in fact watching just as much, if not more traditional content (i.e. broadcast and cable) as non-users. The most notable differentiator between the two groups is that Twitter users are more likely to also consume TV content on emerging platforms such as online SVOD services and content freely available on the internet,” said Ipsos.

The report also found that 69% of Twitter users watch full TV episodes on live TV at least once a week, compared to 59% for non-Twitter users. Some 66% of Twitter users also watched TV on YouTube compared to 40% for non-users, with 57% of Twitter users doing the same on Netflix weekly, compared to 39% for non-Twitter users.