Nielsen has launched it's Twitter TV Ratings system after a year in the making. The TV rating service will take a weekly poll of which US TV shows have the largest audience on Twitter.
The ratings system focuses on tracking an overall audience for each show using Twitter as a metric. The service relies on the total number of tweets, the number of unique accounts that tweet about a TV show, as well as how frequently those tweets are viewed by others. Brands and advertisers may become addicted to the new TV rating service, as there has been a void with measuring the social impact of TV programming. One interesting take away from the service is the apparent divergence between the popular shows on Twitter and the overall TV ratings from Nielsen.
Certainly the new service will help Twitter squeeze new revenue from it's advertising and Promoted Tweet services.