TWITTER SCORES: The new series “Girls” has become a social media phenomenon thanks to its four polarizing characters, experts say. (
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People can’t stop talking about “Girls.”
The HBO series about 20-somethings living in New York is an instant social-media phenomenon, says the company that tracks Internet chatter.
More than 200,000 people took to social media to talk about the show on Sunday, the day of its debut on HBO.
With an estimated first-night audience of just more than 1 million viewers, that means one in every five viewers was on her (and it was mostly women) or his computer or mobile device talking about it.
And that’s what makes “Girls” different than the traditional TV sitcom.
“This [show] is a perfectly situated demographic for social-media use,” says Mark Ghuneim, CEO and founder of social-media research firm, Trendrr.tv.
“That 18-24 group is a sweet spot for social media.”
Most surprising to the experts was that people were still tweeting and posting to Facebook about the show days later.
Even yesterday afternoon, three days after the Sunday-night premiere, “Girls” was getting about eight tweets a minute.
HBO began circulating a specially created hashtag — #mistakesgirlsmake — before the show aired, which proved to be a shrewd social-media move.
Thousands of people used the hashtag on Twitter, making it easily the most used ’tag of the weekend, according to Trendrr.
Ghuneim says the true test of a TV social-media hit is “the slow build-down” — people continuing to tweet about the show days later — and comparing notes about specific characters.
And the people who are talking about the show are important, too.
“The very high end of audience influence were tweeting about ‘Girls’ — a lot of celebrities,” Ghuneim said.