Olympics Grab Social Gold Tuesday

The Summer Olympic Games in Rio dominated TV-related social media posts on Facebook and Twitter Tuesday night with over 3 million uniques, according to Nielsen Social.

"Uniques" are defined as "social media accounts that have authored original content related to a linear TV episode or engaged with that content."

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That was across six networks—CNBC, MSNBC, NBC, NBC Universo, NBCSN and USA Network—over several hours, with 3,410,000 Facebook uniques and 488,000 Twitter accounts.

In fact, sports (and faux sports) took three of the top four social spots.

Related: Rio 2016—Simone Biles Draws Most Reactions During First Week

Pretty Little Liars was second for the night with 260,000 uniques. In third was the Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles on MLB Network with 102,000 uniques.

Rounding out the top four was WWE SmackDown on USA with 87,000 uniques.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.