'China's Twitter' Unveils TV Impact Partnership

Chinese microblogging service Weibo has announced a partnership with Kantar-backed TV and radio audience measurement firm CSM Media Research, to develop a system for evaluating the impact of social media on TV audiences.

The new offer, 'Weibo TV Measurement Index', will bring together Weibo's data on social media mentions of TV programs with CSM's audience research skills to produce measures of shows' mentions and popularity, analysed by demographic information.

The new partners will learn from the ongoing 'Data of Now' co-operation between Kantar and Weibo's US rival Twitter, but will adapt it for the Chinese market.

Weibo's analysis will begin six hours before a TV show begins and run for 24 hours, to give comprehensive data without historical bias, and will report with lists of the day's and week's hottest programs. The range of programs covered will start off limited to top shows but will be expanded; and the partners will also release white papers on trends in the area.

Weibo announced in December that it was working with social media analyst DataSift, to provide the latter's clients with analysis of audiences and sentiment, along with real-time consumer behavior data.

Web site: http://en.csm.com.cn/index.php .