Facebook is becoming increasingly popular for real-time TV discussions

Twitter is well known as a platform for huge volumes of TV viewers to discuss the programs they are watching, but new research shows that Facebook is also a popular tool for discussing TV shows. Up to a quarter of the TV audience in the UK, US, and Australia is posting content related to the show they are watching on Facebook, according to a new report by analytics company SecondSync, which tracked all prime-time television-related interactions on Facebook for a two-week period.

People used to talk about last night’s “I Love Lucy” episode the day after it aired, around the water cooler. These days, audiences can discuss “Downton Abbey” with all their friends and family simultaneously (not just their dreaded co-workers), before the episode is even over. SecondSync’s recent study shows that, in actuality, most TV episode-related Facebook discussions occur in the midst of said episode’s airing. Nearly a quarter of the audience of any one show is posting related content while they watch the episode — until now, these kinds of TV-watching habits were only suspected. SecondSync, a leading provider of social TV analytics in the U.K., confirmed these suspicions by teaming up with Facebook to create a first-of-its-kind study, titled “Watching with Friends: How TV Drives Conversation on Facebook,” tracking online TV conversations in the U.S., U.K. and Australia.