Television ratings for the Olympics were outstanding, while web stats for online engagement blew projections out of the water. Ratings for big events like the Super Bowl, the Oscars and the Grammys were up, and for each event, Twitter and Facebook were clogged with blow-by-blow commentary about everything on-screen.

Is it coincidence, or is there something to the theory that social media is giving TV ratings a boost?

If you ask Alon Marcovici, vice-president of digital media for the Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium, he thinks social media has the power to drive TV ratings and has already done so Ñ although he admits he can't prove it definitively.
He points to the men's hockey final as the event of the Olympics that potentially got the biggest bounce out of social media.

CTV reported the game had a viewership of 16.6 million people, although the audience surged to 22 million when the game went into overtime and Sidney Crosby scored the game winner.
Facebook says more than 3.5 million status updates were sent during the game and there were two major spikes of activity when the U.S. tied the game in the third period and when Crosby scored.
So did Twitter and Facebook users tip off their friends to a great game in action and convince a few people to turn on their TVs?

No one knows for sure but it's highly probable, Marcovici said.
"I'm a full believer that the social media tools helped get viewership (for the Olympics). ... Our ratings were through the roof but there's no way for us to denote whether they would've been through the roof with less Internet or more, less social media or more," he said.
"But it's a powerful word-of-mouth tool and I'm of the belief that good content is its own promotion. So if you've got a great piece of content, (chatter about it) is going to help drive people to watch."

He also pointed to an online chat attracting about 170,000 people during the men's hockey final as a major eyeopener. Those numbers rival the ratings of some shows on broadcast television, he said.
"You can put that up against a whole array of television channels and a lot of them don't get 170,000 people watching something on any given day."
But the CBC's head of television, Kirstine Stewart, doesn't believe the social media theory and instead points to changes in ratings measurement that have boosted the recorded audiences of shows in recent months.

"I don't think (social media) drive up viewership, I think what they do is make sure we keep our ground," she said.

"With (social media) it's not even that it's an extra add-on anymore, it's expected that you provide opportunities to talk about the shows, to be able to find out more. The online experience is no longer an extra extension of what you do on air, it's part of the whole delivery of what you give people."

Social media is definitely pushing more traffic to the websites of broadcasters and audience engagement around television shows is growing, said Matt Tatham, director of media relations for web tracking company Experian Hitwise.
Tatham assumes Twitter and Facebook have boosted TV ratings in some cases, although he too knows of no evidence to prove so.

"The traffic that Facebook and Twitter are sending to (websites of TV broadcasters) has increased quite a bit. There's been an increase of 24 per cent (over the last year) in the amount of traffic the two are sending to the broadcast media category in Canada," he said.
"It's a natural step in the evolution of the technology. People are watching TV with either a laptop or a smartphone in front of them these days."

But if social media can in fact giveth it can also taketh away, added Ingo Muschenetz of whatthetrend.com, a site that follows trending topics on Twitter.
Last July, expectations were sky high for Sacha Baron Cohen's film "Bruno," coming off the success of "Borat." The film struggled out of the gate and never lived up to its box office expectations. There was a lot of speculative blame placed on Twitter and the early online feedback that was predominantly negative.

Muschenetz said bad buzz about a TV show or film can have a bigger drag on a project than the impact of online praise.
"People seem to tweet more about the fact they're annoyed with something more than the fact they love it. Apple is an odd exception Ñ although people definitely (complain) about Apple as well Ñ but for a lot of brands the only time they trend is when people are unhappy with something they've done."

TV shows generally don't dominate the conversation on Twitter Ñ aside from massive events like awards shows, telethons and big sporting contests Ñ but Muschenetz also buys into the theory that ratings can get a nudge from social media traffic.
"I certainly think that's possible because people will tweet that a show is on right now and so as soon as a show starts, it often starts to trend and that could certainly remind people about a show," he said.

"I don't know if its tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people being sent your way but there definitely is a reason why being a trending topic and getting people to chat about your show is financially valuable."

The theory might get another test on May 8, when Betty White hosts "Saturday Night Live." A Facebook campaign, called "Betty White to Host SNL (please?)!", was launched after the 88-year-old actress appeared in a Super Bowl commercial. A couple months later, the wish was granted for the more than 490,000 members who belong to the group.
Will those Facebook users actually tune in for the show, and urge their online friends to do the same? Will ratings be higher than average? NBC and SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels hope the theory is proven true.