Today, the company announced a pilot program for the Nielsen Digital Program Ratings which will track TV content viewed online. The pilot starts with a handful of big-name partners – A+E, ABC, AOL, CBS, The CW, Discovery Communications, FOX, NBC and Univision. The pilot is set to begin in May and run through July, but Nielsen is already announcing that the Digital Program Ratings will see a commercial launch. The pilot program is simply serving to “fine-tune” Nielsen’s methods before they hit primetime, or, later streamed on the internet time – whatever.

“The pilot for Nielsen Digital Program Ratings is a major milestone for the industry,” said Eric Solomon, SVP for Global Digital Audience Measurement at Nielsen. “As a companion product to Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings, Nielsen Digital Program Ratings will enable clients to better understand the online audience for their programming by harnessing the same methodology Nielsen already uses to measure the audience for related advertising.”

Nielsen says that they will start by measuring TV content viewed online, on computers. For instance, CBS will be able to see Nielsen’s numbers for how many streams their online content got on their official site. During the pilot, initial results will only be shared with clients, but Nielsen hopes to make the data public when the program sees a full launch later this year.

Of course, Nielsen plans to expand the program to “additional content types and devices” in the future. So we’re talking streams from sites like Hulu or YouTube, made on and iPad or Xbox.

Nielsen already has an presence in online metrics, including web content (YouTube videos and such). They also track websites based on visitors. This pilot program marks their first foray into tracking online streams of traditional TV content, however.

“The potential to measure video viewing of specific programs on linear TV as well as the Internet is significant,” said Alan Wurtzel, President of Research and Media Development, NBCUniversal. “It’s an important step toward reaching the ‘holy grail’ of true cross-platform measurement.”

It’s an interesting move from Nielsen, but the online viewership tracking won’t really come into its true form until Nielsen is measuring all types of online TV streaming across all types of devices. Although Nielsen is just announcing this pilot program, it’s clear that full inclusion is what they envision.

Of course, Apple has always including its rating information in the details section of the app. There, you’ll not only find the rating but a detailed description of all the “offending” content that caused Apple to rate it as such. But of course, you have to scroll down to access this. The new ratings box is front and center at the top of the app screen.

This slight tweak is just another example of Apple doing what it can to highlight mature content in the apps contained in its App Store. Apple has always had a nudity phobia when it comes to apps. But that focus on Apple’s apps has intensified as of late, after the whole Vine controversy.

When Twitter’s six-second Vine video app first launched, it rather quickly became overrun by porn – which, on it’s own merits, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If that’s what people want, right? Vine doesn’t ban nudity in its terms (although they did make some moves to decrease its visibility inside the app). Some App Store users complained that Apple made the Vine app and editor’s pick, considering its association with adult content.

Apple eventually bumped Vine’s rating to 17+ in response.

AppleInsider, who first spotted the new ratings boxes, points out that this isn’t the first time that Apple has amended its App Store app details to make things more clear for users. Apple recently settled a lawsuit filed by angry parents whose kids were spending large amounts of cash in in-app purchases in freemium apps.

In response, Apple added a small bit of text inside freemium apps letting parents knows that they supported in-app purchasing.

While CBS raked in ratings for established shows such as The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men, as well as the its coverage of this year’s Super Bowl. Fox continued to ride the success of American Idol, but NBC averaged only a 1.2 rating in the key adult demographic from January 31 to February 19. As Deadline points out, that’s lower than the ratings Spanish-lauguage station Univision has seen over the same period.

New NBC shows such as Do No Harm and 1600 Penn have been ratings failures. The only shows NBC seems to have that garner even moderate ratings are The Biggest Loser and The Office.

Networks have the money and exposure to provide free TV entertainment to millions of Americans, but as the country becomes more connected those same networks are becoming less relevant. The NBC Facebook page, for example, has only around 400,000 “Likes,” while Netflix has over 3.7 million. Now that Netflix has demonstrated through House of Cards that it can provide popular premium TV programming without getting it from other content producers, networks should be scrambling to make themselves more relevant – and available – online.

The AP reports (via ABC), citing Nielsen numbers, that the midseason premiere set a series record on Sunday night with 12.3 million viewers, beating its previous record, which was set when AMC ran the season premiere in October (10.9 million). According to the report, 7.7 million of this past Sunday’s viewers were between the ages of 18 and 49 – a record on its own, for a cable show for that demographic.

Earlier this week, AMC posted a couple of behind-the-scenes videos looking at the record-setting episode. The network also posted a preview of the next episode.

For those who have yet to see the midseason premiere, AMC is offering it online for free until Sunday, March 10th. The network will not be offering other episodes of the series as free online streams, but they want to get fans started off, so if you’re interested, you have a few weeks.

More The Walking Dead fun here.

Vimeo says that it’s a testament to their “unflinching belief in the integrity of visual storytelling,” because “one cannot ignore the naked, the violent, and the swearing when striving to capture the breadth of the human condition.” Amen to that.

But not all video ares suitable for all audiences, even if they do accurately depict the human condition. With that in mind, Vimeo is introducing new content ratings.

Starting today, you’ll see a new badge next to the title/artist info on all videos on the site. It will either read “mature,” “all audiences,” or “not yet rated.”

“This means we’ll ask creators to tell us if there’s nudity, violence, or illegal substances (e.g., plutonium) in their videos, which can still be uploaded to Vimeo as long as they comply with our Guidelines. For those who never upload videos with mature content, it’s easy to mark everything as appropriate for all audiences in your global video settings,” says Vimeo.

YouTube, for instance, has featured warnings on some videos that they have been restricted due to age guidelines and that they may contain mature content. Vimeo, who has always been known for allowing a little more artistic freedom should we say, isn’t limiting any of that. They’re just giving people an additional heads-up.

Now, when you are browsing through the Explore feature, each location with sport a number between 1-10. That number should be seen as an indicator of “how much people love it,” according to Foursquare.

Foursquare’s not explaining exactly how they are calculating this number score, but they are saying what types of signals go into it:

“Instead of other sites where every place gets 3.5 stars, we come up with our scores using the same Foursquare magic that powers Explore. We look at signals like tips, likes, dislikes, popularity, loyalty, local expertise, and nearly 3 billion check-ins from over 25 million people worldwide. And, with every check-in and Explore search, our scores will get smarter and better” they say.

Foursquare has been taking steps recently to move “beyond the check-in” and make their explore feature a well-rounded service that can compete was a standalone local search destination – a move that they hope will allow them to make gains on similar local search sites like Yelp or Urbanspoon. Last month they opened up their explore feature to non-members, directly accesible via Foursquare.com. And last week the company expanded that functionality to their BlackBerry app, allowing mobile users to reap the benefits of Foursquare’s personalized results without signing up.

Google’s Megan Stevenson posted the following to Google+ on Wednesday:

Megan Stevenson18 hours ago

Update to the Reviewing Scale on Google+ Local

Today it’s easier than ever to write accurate, useful reviews on Google+ Local, thanks to the updated rating scale we rolled out. If you want to rate the food at a restaurant, or the quality of a mechanic, just choose "poor – fair," “good,” “very good,” or "excellent". Behind the scenes, we’ll convert your ratings into numbers and factor them into the business' precise 30-point score that shows up in Google+, Search and Maps. 

Give it a try! Click on the Google+ Local icon in the left navigation bar, search for a local spot and click "Write a review.” Happy reviewing!

54    2 Powered by socialditto

When Google announced the Android changes, it also launched “favorite” stars on the desktop experience (or brought them back rather).

Google’s ratings system, since the implementation of Google+ Local (taking the place of the old Google Places) has been the subject of some controversy with local businesses. Some claimed to be losing clicks, and others have had issues with reviews being deleted.

First, on Google Maps for Android, the ratings system has been adjusted so you can choose between Poor/Fair, Good, Very Good, and Excellent.

On the desktop, Google has brought back “favorite” stars, which let you star placers to see later.

The updates were announced in a Google+ post from Google’s Jade Wang.

For users, this means that they may not even see apps that habitually receive low ratings from other users – which is no doubt a good thing. For developers, it means that good work can be rewarded and crappy work, well, may not even get invited to the party.

But naturally, user ratings can be an tricky metric. Not only do you never know which users actually took the rating process seriously and which users are simply bitter for bitter’s sake, but users ratings are prime territory for manipulation.

And though a Facebook product manager tells Inside Facebook that they are “considering options for allowing users to rate apps directly from the App Center page,” it’s not currently possible to rate any app in the new App Center on demand.

Every user rating so far has been based on a random sample.

If you go to an app in the App Center and hover over the star rating, you can see a breakdown of how many votes the app has received as well as the breakdown (1-5 stars). But you can’t vote on it. That’s because Facebook purposefully randomizes app voting in order to avoid manipulation and attempt to provide accurate ratings – or as accurate as you can ever expect from user ratings.

According to Inside Facebook, the random app rating prompts can appear in the recently used app area below a user’s bookmarks, or on the right-hand side of some pages. Although asking a user to rate an app as they are in the process of removing it seems like it may bias the results a bit, Facebook is apparently still prompting this type of rating – but in a sparse, random manner.

Considering that Facebook made a point to talk about how ranking in their App Center would rely so heavily on ratings and engagement, it’s nice to see a system like this in place. It helps make the concept of the user rating trustworthy, which is something we can’t say for all platforms.

It drew in 21.5 million viewers according to Fox projections, which is also an all time low. With the exception of seasons 2, 5 and 10, the show has been in year over year decline. Those few exceptions only brought a fleeting resurgence in popularity. Season two posted the highest numbers of all, with a 16.8/37 Nielson rating and 38 million viewers. This decline has culminated in a 6.3/19 this past season with 21.5 million viewers. (The first number in the Nielson rating represents the percentage of TVs tuned to that station, the second represents the percentage of people watching TV at that time who are tuned to that program.)

Some have attributed this poor performance to a large number of shows that saw its season finale air last night. Each of them saw an increase in thier viewrs compared to last weeks episodes. The season finale of The Middle (2.0/7 up 5%), Modern Family (4.0/11 up 10%), Don’t Trust The B—- (2.5/7 up 32%), Revenge (2.4/6 up 20%) NBC’s Off Their Rockers finale (1.5/5 up 7%) and Law & Order: SVU‘s (1.9/5up 12%) all contributed to Idol’s poor performance.

With the increasing number of vocal and talent shows currently being aired, one has to wonder how long Idol can last against so much competition.

Here are the season by season numbers for American Idol, from Deadline Hollywood:

WEDNESDAY-09/04/2002 8:00 PM-10:00 PM 23.021 million 10.8/30

[source: deadline]