Dive Brief: 

• Nielsen debuted its Twitter TV ratings Monday with the goal of measuring the activity and reach of tweets mentioning TV shows. 
• The data so far has shown that Twitter users' habits and demographics do not fall in line with mass audience viewing data. For example, Twitter's 49.2 billion users tend be younger and mostly in cities. 
• The amount of mentions does not directly affect, or even reflect, the number of viewers, as CBS' five top-ten-rated shows during the week of Sept. 23 failed to crack the top ten in the Twitter TV ratings. 

Dive Insight: 

With Twitter's IPO placing it under the microscope, data from Nielsen could prove crucial. If the social network is able to back up its claims that tweet mentions are valuable for TV programming, this could be a lucrative step toward further monetization. Nielsen's research is the first major look into the data, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out for both TV and social media.