Twitter: Please Tweet While You Watch TV

10.11.2010
A Twitter executive speaking here at the today says more and more people are using Twitter to to boring old TV-watching.

The Web TV industry has been talking for years about such an experience, and some companies have tried to build chat into their web TV services, but Twitter says its service makes "community viewing" possible now-no assembly required.

The statistics seem to be on Twitter's side on this one. recently found that a surprising number-60 percent--of people routinely watch the tube while also surfing the web on their laptop.

also points to Nielson ratings, which show that tweet traffic on the East Coast spikes every time an episode of Dancing with the Stars came on TV. Twitter's Robin Sloan says this phenomenon can work two ways: The airing of a popular show can spark waves of tweets, but the viewership of those shows also seems to increase as more and more people tweet about it.

Sloan says some shows are more "tweetable" than others. To be tweet-worthy on a large scale, the show needs to have "liveliness, uncertain outcome, and a wide national audience.

Sloan identifies three main modes of with Twitter.