Study: GetGlue Usage Sees Rapid Growth

Has more usage than Twitter for many popular scripted programs

By George Winslow -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/3/2012 6:00:00 AM

As programmers pay more attention to their social TV strategies, a new internal study from GetGlue has highlighted some important differences in the way people use social media for different genres of TV programming.

While Twitter remains an extremely popular social media platform for sports, news and reality TV, the GetGlue analysis shows that its usage frequently outpaces Twitter for scripted dramas and sitcoms and that its usage is growing much faster than Twitter, reports Jesse Burros, director of business operations.

"We see significant spikes in social TV during major events," like the NBA Finals, where Twitter usage skyrockets, he noted in a briefing.

But this overall usage tends to hide very different usage patterns among different genres of programming, he added. When GetGlue dug into the data it found that "scripted TV performs very differently compared to sports, news and reality," he noted. "In the majority [of popular scripted shows] GetGlue outperforms Twitter."

Four of the top 10 highest rated scripted broadcast TV shows in April and May 2012 had more social TV activity on GetGlue than Twitter, and GetGlue outperformed Twitter on nine of the 10 highest-rated cable shows during summer 2012.

Burros also noted that in the scripted programming area, GetGlue usage was also growing much more rapidly than Twitter.

For example, GetGlue usage around Castle was 1.7 times than of Twitter and Modern Family was 1.4 times higher than Twitter. GetGlue usage for Castle grew by 2,300% from April-May 2011 and by 1,600% for Modern Family over a year earlier. In contrast, Twitter's growth was 104% and 174% for the two highest-rated broadcast scripted shows in that period.

GetGlue also seems to be responsible for a significant amount of the Twitter usage around popular TV shows. When GetGlue turned off sharing features with Twitter for five popular TV programs on Sept. 2, 2012, all showed declines. Twitter activity around Breaking Bad, for example, slipped by 9% while Leverage dropped 74%.