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Old-fashioned television has become so important to Internet-era social networks as to push the two major ones, Facebook and Twitter, into an escalating battle.

Both see the social conversation around television shows as a way to increase use of their sites and win a bigger piece of advertisers' spending, which eMarketer estimates will be $171 billion across all types of media this year in the United States.

Social network users in China and India, according to a coming report by eMarketer, are highly active in their chatter during TV broadcasts, outdoing even Americans, half of whom visit social networks while watching TV, and one in six of whom post comments.

Both Twitter and Facebook are trying to claim the title of users' preferred site for online chatter about shows.

Twitter, citing data calculated by Nielsen's SocialGuide service, said about 600,000 people had posted more than 1.2 million messages, or tweets, about the "Breaking Bad" TV show's finale September 29 over about a 10-hour period, while Facebook said three million people had posted about the show.

Twitter has signed TV-related deals with dozens of advertisers and content distributors over the last year to burnish its growth prospects as it prepares to sell stock to the public.

Neither Facebook nor Twitter has disclosed how much revenue it makes from advertising related to TV, and some industry experts doubt they are earning much.

Still, there is little question that television is a favorite topic for users. About half of Americans visit social networks while watching TV, and one in six Americans posts comments about shows during their broadcasts.

Live events like sports attract the highest engagement. "Sports events comprise somewhere between 2 and 3 percent of TV programming in any given month but generate close to 50 percent of the Twitter activity" around TV, said Sean Casey, senior vice president for product at Nielsen's SocialGuide unit.

Nielsen has found that the average audience for Twitter messages about a TV show is 50 times the number of people posting messages about the show. If 2,000 people are posting messages about a show, for example, an average of 100,000 people are seeing those messages. The research firm also found that heavy Twitter activity around a popular broadcast can drive more people to both the show and Twitter.

That kind of impact intrigues networks and advertisers, and Nielsen has begun reporting detailed Twitter activity along with conventional TV audience ratings to its clients.

For viewers, the line between what they see on TV and what they see on their smartphones and tablets is quickly blurring.

During this year's United States Open, for example, the tournament sponsor Heineken posted highlights on Twitter, including a 54-shot rally between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. Viewers could catch up on the matches from anywhere.

"We were trying to bring people to the event who weren't there," said Ron Amram, senior media director at Heineken USA. "All of us have realized how powerful Twitter can be to get the conversation going."

Twitter, considered by many to be the leader in social conversation around live TV, has spent much of 2013 courting networks like Fox and MTV and consumer brands like Heineken.

"We've built a business around working collaboratively with TV," said Adam Bain, Twitter's president of global revenue. "We really see our role as a force multiplier."

Facebook, whose social platform is built more around each individual's web of relationships than rapid-fire conversation, has a more complicated relationship with TV.

With about 128 million Americans and 699 million people worldwide visiting the site on any given day, the company contends that it has become a mass medium with something that television does not have: a vast amount of information about its users that can be used to finely target advertising pitches.

Emphasizing its ability to reach consumers wherever they are through their mobile devices, Facebook has stepped up its efforts to convince traditional TV advertisers that its platform can reach their customers more efficiently than TV.

Even as Facebook competes with television networks, it is also trying to gain favor with them. In recent weeks, it has begun offering networks like CNN and Fox Sports access to publicly posted comments and the ability to search for broad trends.

Privately, Facebook executives acknowledge that they are playing catch-up to Twitter, which has dominated industry thinking about social TV.

Jason Kint, a senior vice president for the CBS Corporation's interactive division until earlier this year, said that real-time conversation about TV was valuable, but he doubted that either Twitter or Facebook could cash in.

"Maybe one day they'll live up to it all," he said. "But I certainly don't see it taking away ad share from television."

The New York Times

Social media sites want to become the preferred site for comment on live sports and other television programs. Football fans at a stadium outside Boston. Bill Sikes / Associated Press

(China Daily 10/13/2013 page10)