Does Twitter Drive TV Viewership? [VIDEO]

Twitter says it saw its most expansive integration with television to date during the recent Royal Wedding, and it suggests that engagement on Twitter drives TV viewership.

The company featured the above video in a blog post, providing a glimpse at how TV and Twitter have grown closer over the years. Looking at the footage, the rapid growth of the platform's legitimacy is impressive -- especially when late night host David Letterman was making fun of Twitter a year ago.

To be sure, Twitter has increasingly found a place in mainstream TV programming. Social sharing is included in ABC's Grey’s Anatomy Sync for iPad and NBC's iPad app, as well as most second-screen offerings.

And then there are the tie-ins. MTV gave a big thumbs-up to Twitter with its search for the first-ever TJ, or Twitter Jockey, and The Science Channel introduced Twitter to its programming last year by adding tweets to An Idiot Abroad. Super misanthropic series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia even introduced Twitter into its show with Sunny Tweets, an app that let users interact with each other and featured the program's actors tweeting during the show.

We've been questioning whether Twitter is playing a hand in increased viewership for a while now -- the 2010 Grammy Awards saw a 35% increase over the 2009 event, perhaps in part due to social integration. Most recently, the Super Bowl saw massive engagement on Twitter -- setting a new record at the time for tweets per second. The Super Bowl also drew the highest ever audience for a U.S. TV show.