By now, it’s become conventional wisdom that Twitter is the new water cooler. It’s the place that those 'did you see what happened on...?' conversations take place.

In a rare acknowledgement of the changing times in the television industry, Nielsen, the US television rating company, has partnered with Twitter to create a social media analysis and measurement metric. The establishment of Twitter as the online water cooler in addition to the proliferation of second-screen viewing have made the need for a social media audience metric more relevant. The 2013 TV season will be the first to feature the new measurements.

“The Nielsen Twitter TV Rating is a significant step forward for the industry, particularly as programmers develop increasingly captivating live TV and new second-screen experiences, and advertisers create integrated ad campaigns that combine paid and earned media,” Steve Hasker, president of global media products and advertiser solutions at Nielsen, says.

The second-screen phenomenon has recently gained traction since everyone from toddlers to grannies have tablets or smart phones that use alongside watching television. The Nielsen Twitter TV Rating will be the first real-time metrics that analyse the social media activity of TV audiences.

Ratings themselves have a huge amount of importance in the entertainment industry and can decide if a show lives or dies. With audience numbers becoming more difficult to measure due to advancing technologies, the Twitter rating may allow Nielson a more rounded measurement of audience metrics.