According to a TV Guide user study, social networking discussion about television shows drives tune-in, loyalty and live viewing ratings. Due to social network impressions, 17% of respondents polled said they became a fan of a particular show, and 31% claimed they continued to watch a program. Twenty seven percent said that they watch more live programming to avoid internet spoilers, up from 20% in 2010. TV Guide queried from it’s over 24 million monthly users.

Some more detail on the analysis of the user-survey –

Those who claimed a social networking impression prompted them to begin watching a show cited reasons being that people had good things to say about it (76%), topics were interesting (64%) and 13% claimed that they just like to watch shows that others are watching. When asked about why they were continuing to watch a particular show, 77% said that social networking impressions helped maintain their interest, 66% cited topics and storylines again and 34% mentioned controversial moments.

The complete results of the survey conducted in February will be presented by TVGuide.com at Hill Holliday’s TVnext Summit in Boston on Monday. TV Guide has stated that their findings came from the survey of 3,041 users.

Somewhat on-topic – in France, one can’t even mention the words “Facebook” or “Twitter” in a TV show.