(Updated at 2:45 p.m. PT: Per Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings, the Season 5 premiere of “The Walking Dead” actually generated 1.32 million tweets. The data for the below infographic was compromised due to a technical glitch on the source’s end. TheWrap regrets the error.)
“We were not made aware of a data interruption that began on Oct. 7 causing fewer posts to display in queries,” Way to Blue told TheWrap when the error was discovered. “[Sysomos’s] engineering team has located missing data and is working to back-fill with no data loss. Had we been made aware of this issue we would have held back the pull.”
The season five premiere of “The Walking Dead” was the series’ most talked about episode ever, dominating social media activity for all of scripted television in 2014 as well as for the night. The premiere telecast garnered a total of 1,320,056 Tweets, making “The Walking Dead” the #1 new season drama premiere for 2014 in terms of Tweets and the #1 series premiere of 2014 in terms of Unique Authors. “The Walking Dead” is also one of the only shows in Twitter history to have had all 10 trending topics in the United States pertain to the show simultaneously. On Facebook, the day of premiere saw more than 7.7 million users driving more than 32.1 million interactions related to “The Walking Dead.”
“The Walking Dead” is alive and well, but overall mentions and intention-to-view the Season 5 premiere has dipped on social media from last year, according to one study at least.
Based on a Way to Blue infographic creating exclusively for TheWrap, the AMC drama landed just under 400,000 social media mentions on Sunday, about 13 percent less than last year. Viewer-wise the series is considered cable’s biggest, and the zombie apocalypse show’s presence is regularly felt across Twitter, Facebook and other multiple social platforms.
Nielsen ratings for the Season 5 premiere have not yet been released as of time of this posting.
Also read: ‘The Walking Dead’ Premiere Aftermath: Regrouping After Chaos at Terminus
In addition to comparison to the show’s own numbers from last year, the graphic below also compares the “Walking Dead” Season 5 opener to other recent fall premieres from a similar genre.
The “Intent-To-View” bar values are derived from a series of manually implemented affinity searches, based on users posting phrases such as “I really want to see…,” or “I can’t wait,” etc.
Way to Blue’s data is primarily pulled from Twitter, but it incorporates all publicly available social data. Last week, AMC renewed the series for a sixth season.
See TheWrap’s exclusive infographic from Way to Blue:
