How Beyonce Is Bigger Than Hurricanes, Earthquakes and SuperBowl Sunday

When I was a child , there was a number that crudely mensurate how many people paid attention to something . It was call the Nielsen rating . Perhaps you remember it . Today it ’s an insignificant token that only unwrap what was happening .

The VMAs had its biggest show ever this year . A phonograph record - reveal 12.4 million people tuned in live . Which actually seems like a very little bit , give how many people were talking about it . Because while MTV had a hit with the VMAs , so did Twitter . News of Beyonce ’s uterine passenger , which she revealed at the show , yield some 8,868 tweet per second . It was Twitter ’s biggest mo yet . And it shows that the company is sitting on the most worthful advertising information that there is : a manner to valuate , box and betray unexpected thing that we care about right now , in real time .

We used to swear on ratings or scrutinise circulation number to influence what hoi polloi were interested in . Today , we more and more babble out about tweet Per Second . ( And by “ we , ” I mean the always athirst medium maw , smacking its lips in anticipation of sucking core from the next micro tendency or tending cramp that might convince an otherwise disinterested spectator to flip the epithelial duct to 759 — or even better , remain there . )

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Whenever anything big pass off in the news show , CNN and Fox News and the electronic web increasingly break into Twitter mode , learn tweets on the air , talking about how many people are squeeze and broadly going into barbaric - eyed social media manic disorder .

Aside from wee-wee Mark Zuckerberg wish he had made status messages public by default from the get - go so that CNN would read Facebook update on air , it ’s revealing in that it shows that even the professional medium — the ostensible arbiters of opinion and news — have realized that you and I are no longer paying attention .

We ’re more concerned in each other . We ’re all disperse now . I ’d prefer to get a line what you have to say , especially in aggregate , than melodic line into Wolf Blitzer . And when it come to measuring the shock of events , societal media ratings weigh more than Nielsens , or at least they should , and here ’s why .

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Twitter is the most of import metric of tending . It is not based on retiring deportment . It is equally capable of appraise written events , and the completely unexpected . And it is singular because it measures not just use , but also interest .

Yes , the Nielsens will evidence you how many hoi polloi watched the VMAs , but social medium can tell you how many people in reality bear attention . And while perhaps you could have foresee they might be great this year , would anyone have been able to predict that the VMAs — not the Oscars , not the SuperBowl , not the final Shuttle launch — would be the most talked - about video outcome of the year ? Twitter can differentiate you that . ( Facebook should be able to as well . ) And it can tell you that as it happens .

In 2008 , when it was still a nascent service , Twitter revealed some number to me that show its top events of the late class , appraise in the identification number of tweets per minute .

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The chart is a remarkable demonstration of Twitter ’s ontogeny . Tweets per minute ? How quaint ! Tweets are now measured at a faster rate per second than they were just three years ago per minute .

But it ’s more interesting to see how consistently interested we are in the unexpected . Because while Twitter has changed greatly in the past three years — from how it work , to the room we get at it , to the telephone number of people on it — the things we are simultaneously interested in have n’t changed at all .

Today , Beyonce ’s VMA appearance holds the top touch for Tweets per second . Prior to that , the news of the Nipponese Women ’s World Cup victory held the record . ( belike because it was an case intently watched by two very Twitter heavy countries . ) And while it did n’t break a record , the late east coast quake generated 5,500 TPS . In 2008 , a presidential debate held the top spot . It knocked off a Japanese quake . A Euro 2008 semi final match was the vainglorious event prior to that . What all of these event have in common is a sure unpredictability .

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The matter about television rating or audited circulation numbers is that they have never truly been about what we are pay attention to . They were ( and are ) a way for advertisers to make informed decisions about what to empower in found on what masses have give attention to in the past , as a prognosticator of future performance . They only appraise what has already transpire . This may have been useful for buy chunk of time during a time of year finale of Dallas , but when something amazing and unexpected bechance , there is no good way for an advertiser to catch up with it .

This is the promise of genuine - time conversation , that our interests can be commoditized , survive and on the fly . It does n’t have to be just about Twitter , of course . Facebook and Google+ should be as capable of measuring , packaging and selling our tangible - clock time , slue interest data . But it ’s very exonerated that this newfangled power to measure what we care about enough to gloss on aright now , at this very instant , is much more valuable than measurements of past performance or passive intake .

All the moreso because of how much society has fragmented . We no longer all watch the same four channels , or even tune in to television series at the same time . The only things that seem to catch our simultaneous attention anymore are those that offer up the high play of the unexpected and unknown : mutation , politics ( itself a sort of variation ) , provocative live television , and natural cataclysm that occur with small - to - no warning .

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