Big TV Events Spark Associated Social Networking

NEW YORK: More and more folks are socializing online during major broadcast TV events, Nielsen says. Around 10 percent of viewers now visit social networking sites and browse during big broadcasts.

“Recently, when 29 percent of the U.S. population tuned into the Academy Awards on March 7, more than 13 percent of those viewers spent time on the Web at the same time,” Nielsen said. “For the 2009 Oscars, 25.6 percent of the population tuned in and 8.7 percent surfed the Web simultaneously. A large percentage of those watching TV and surfing... visited Facebook, Google or Yahoo!, a trend also seen in this year’s Super Bowl.”

Nearly 47 percent of all Americans were said to watch the 2010 Super Bowl, and nearly 15 percent simultaneously surfed. Last year, about half of Americans watched the game and 13 percent surfed. The charts included below show where they went: