In Race With Twitter, Facebook, Like, Fluffs Its Social TV Numbers

On the same day that Twitter and Nielsen are debuting their first TV Ratings report emerging from the two companies’ partnership, Facebook is slyly releasing official numbers designed to give its own TV efforts a boost.

Facebook claims that AMC’s hot “Breaking Bad” finale was a hit across its social network, generating more than 5.5 million interactions from 3 million+ users. Twitter, meanwhile, saw 1.47 million tweets in comparison from 682,000+ uniques for the same show. What does this mean for Twitter, whose forthcoming IPO is heavily dependent on its TV partnerships and ad business? Is Facebook moving in for the kill?

Well, maybe. But Facebook’s numbers feel a little fudged here.

For background, Facebook announced that it will begin sending out weekly TV reports to the U.S.’s top four networks this week – a move that was not coincidentally disclosed just ahead of the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating report’s launch. Facebook says it will send data to ABC, NBC, Fox and CBS as well as a few other select partners, in order to demonstrate to what extent social conversations around TV programs are now taking place on its own network.

For example, Facebook found that ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” generated over a million interactions across 750,000 users on its network. Previously, reports had stated that Facebook sees five times as much TV-related activity on its network than on Twitter. But as TechCrunch’s Josh Constine said before, that’s not a fair comparison.

I can’t believe Walt was a woman the whole time. Awesome ending. #BreakingBad

— Zach Braff (@zachbraff) September 30, 2013